Word: cafee
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After we got married, one spring afternoon in Paris, we wandered dazedly across the Place St. Sulpice, past the baroque fountain where the four stone bishops stand guard, and ordered a bottle of Moet & Chandon at the Cafe de la Mairie. Since that all happened exactly 40 years ago, it seemed a good time to return to Paris (When is it not a good time to return to Paris?) to inspect some of the cafes where we had spent much of our youth...
...greatest of these three great cafes, the Deux Magots, is the newest (1875), but it seems the most venerable and the most welcoming. If Lipp's wonders who you are, and the Flore wonders how much you've got, the Deux Magots wonders what you'd like to be served. Located just across from the old church, the Deux Magots derives its strange name from two large Chinese statues that sit high up in the center of the cafe. Prices today are appalling: a Coca-Cola costs $5, a Bloody Mary $10. But as one sits on the eastern terrace...
These grand institutions began during the 17th century with the spread all over Europe of the Arab taste for coffee. The oldest cafe in Paris is the Procope, which has been operating on the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie ever since 1686. The Procope was nearly a century old when it claimed Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire among its customers. Later came the revolutionaries, Robespierre, Danton, Marat and even Napoleon...
...fate of the Coupole, a barnlike old brasserie that had served as home to Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Samuel Beckett; it was acquired by a restaurant chain, torn down and rebuilt in 1988 into a sort of yuppie grazing center. More felicitous was the 1986 transformation of the Cafe du Dome, a plain, bare sort of place, where an impoverished writer used to be able to get a saucisse de Toulouse and a plate of mashed potatoes for about $1. One section of the Dome has been turned into a really excellent fish restaurant (Michelin gives it one star), with...
...house is politics. The National Assembly is just a few blocks down the boulevard, and when sessions run late, legislators traditionally repair to Lipp's for sustenance, discussion and intrigue. One of the regulars over the years has been Francois Mitterrand, now, of course, President of the Republic. Any cafe that can claim a President among its customers has little need of further endorsements...