Coffeehouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or cafe (French/Spanish/Portuguese: café; Italian: caffè) shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks. Food choices range from pastries and muffins to soups and sandwiches. In some countries, cafes more closely resemble restaurants, offering a range of hot meals, and possibly being licensed to serve alcohol. Many coffee houses in the Muslim world, and in Muslim districts in the West, offer shisha, powdered tobacco smoked through a hookah. In establishments where it is tolerated - which may be found notably in the Netherlands, in Christiania (Copenhagen, Denmark), and in certain parts of Canada - cannabis may be smoked as well.
From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups.
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[edit] History
Since the 16th century, the coffeehouse (al-maqhah in Arabic, qahveh-khaneh in Persian or kahvehane or kıraathane in Turkish) has served as a social gathering place in Middle Eastern countries where men assemble to drink coffee or tea, listen to music, read books, play chess and backgammon, and perhaps hear a recitation from the works of Antar or from Shahnameh. In modern Egypt, Turkey and Syria, coffeehouses attract many males to watch TV or play chess and have the "shisha".
The traditional tale of the origins of Viennese coffeehouses begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki. Kulczycki began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard. The story that Kulczycki founded Europe's first coffeehouse has the ring of apocrypha to skeptics who find the story too pat — and the date too late. It is rational to understand that he opened Vienna's first coffeehouse, not Europe's.
In 1457 fist coffee house was opened in Istanbul, and in the 16th century there were many coffee houses in Cairo and Istanbul. In the 17th century coffeehouses opened for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire. Coffeehouses first became popular in Europe with the introduction of coffee in the 17th century. The first Turkish coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford by one Jacob or Jacobs, a Turkish Jew, in 1650. The first coffeehouse in London was opened two years later in St. Michael's Alley in Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Ragusan servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment [1]. Boston had its first in 1670, and Paris in 1671. The Cafe Le Procope [2], which was founded in Paris in 1686, is still in business. It was a major locus of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.
Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. They were great social levellers, open to all and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and the gazettes read. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739 there were 551 coffeehouses in London, including meeting places for Tories and Whigs, people of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center, coffeehouses known as gathering-places for the wits or for stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors. According to one French visitor, the Abbé Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."
Ladies were not permitted in coffeehouses. In a well-known engraving of a Parisian coffeehouse of c. 1700 [3], the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffeepots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, decently separated in a canopied booth, from which she doles out coffee in tall cups.
In London, coffeehouses preceded the club of the mid-18th century, which skimmed away some of the more aristocratic clientele. Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's. In New York the Tontine Coffeehouse at the foot of Wall Street near the docks became a central meeting place. In small cities a coffeehouse functioned as a place where messages might be left and picked up. American coffee shops are also often connected with indie, jazz and acoustic music, and will often have them playing either live or recorded in their shops.
In the mid to late 19th century, some coffeehouses were provided in England as temperance establishments for the working classes, as an alternative to the public house.
[edit] Contemporary American and British coffeehouses
The current spate of chain coffee shops have a clear lineal descent from the espresso and pastry centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian-American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach were major haunts of the Beats, who became highly identified with these coffeehouses. As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. Before the rise of the Seattle-based Starbucks chain, Seattle and other parts of the Pacific Northwest had a thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; Starbucks standardized and mainstreamed this model.
Liquor laws in much of the United States prohibit anyone under the age of 21 from entering bars, so coffeehouses are often gathering places for youths. Coffeehouses have also proven popular additions to communities where alcoholic beverage sales are prohibited altogether, such as in dry counties.
In the United States, since approximately the Beat era, the term "coffeehouse" has come to imply the availability of espresso drinks, while "coffee shop" suggests a diner where coffee is also served.
A counter clerk in a coffeehouse has come to be known in English as a barista, from the Italian word for bartender.
The contemporary coffeehouse is the latest example of a drinking establishment—bars, public houses, taverns and soda shops have also served this purpose—as the center for cultural exchange in a particular community, often fomenting social and political change. See, for example, the meetings of the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolution and the abortive Beer Hall Putsch by the German Nazi party in 1923.
In the United States, from the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also served as a venue for entertainment, most commonly folk performers. This was likely due to the ease at accommodating a lone performer accompanying themself only with a guitar, even with limited floorspace; the political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their above-referenced association with political action. A number of well known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins bemoaned his woman's inattentiveness to her domestic situation due to her overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing, in his 1969 Coffeehouse Blues.
From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, many churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. They were often storefronts and had names like The Gathering Place (Riverside, CA), The Lost Coin (New York City), and Jesus For You (Buffalo, NY). Christian music (guitar-based) was performed, coffee and food was provided, and Bible studies were convened as people of varying backgrounds gathered in a casual "unchurchy" setting. These coffeehouses usually had a rather short life, about three to five years or so on average.[specify]
In the United Kingdom, traditional coffeehouses as gathering places for youths fell out of favour after the 1960s, but the concept has been revived since the 1990s by chains such as Starbucks, Coffee Republic, Costa Coffee and Caffè Nero as places for professional workers to meet and eat out or simply to buy beverages and snack foods on their way to and from the workplace.
[edit] Contemporary cafes
In the United States and the United Kingdom, a cafe (from the Spanish word for coffee) is a small restaurant. Styles of cafes vary; some concentrate upon many styles of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, with possibly a selection of baked goods and sandwiches, while others offer full menus. American cafes may or may not serve alcoholic beverages, and the serving of coffee may be incidental to the serving of food. British cafes, however, do not sell alcohol.
In France, a cafe certainly serves alcoholic beverages. French cafes also often serve simple snacks (sandwiches etc...). They may or may not have a restaurant section. A brasserie is a cafe that serves meals, generally single dishes, in a more relaxed setting than a restaurant. A "bistro" is a cafe / restaurant, especially in Paris. Bistro food is supposed to be cheap, but in recent years bistros, especially in Paris, have become increasingly expensive.
As a result of significant immigration from mainland Europe in the 19th century and 20th century a traditional European cafe culture is thriving in the major cities in Australia with dozens of privately owned establishments operating in even moderately sized cities. Often known locally as coffee shops these establishments often cluster along certain streets and with the weather allowing kerb side seating much of the year certain areas resemble a large party on a Friday or Saturday evening.
Cafes developed from the coffeehouses that became popular in Europe upon the introduction of coffee. Those also spawned another, completely different type of restaurant, the cafeteria.
There are two types of cafes: those that specialize in coffee and hot beverages, and those with a full menu, the most famous examples of which are the "French cafes," especially those in Paris.
Cafes, on warmer days, may have an outdoor section (terrace, pavement or sidewalk cafe) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafes. See also public space.
Cafes offer a more open public space compared to many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male dominated with a focus on drinking alcohol. Many people complain that traditional, local venues are being pushed out by cloned, characterless cafes controlled by big business. This is often due to the business practices of chains such as Starbucks, which critics have complained will oversaturate an area so as to drive overall corporate profits up while lowering the profits of individual establishments.
One of the original uses of the cafe, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet cafe. The spread of modern style cafes to many places, urban and rural, went hand in hand with computers. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary-styled venue helps to create a youthful, modern, outward-looking place, compared to the traditional pubs, or old-fashioned diners that they replaced. In the mid 2000s, cafes commonly offer Internet access, just as they offer telephones and newspapers.
In the Netherlands, where the sale of cannabis is decriminalized, many cannabis shops call themselves coffeeshops.
[edit] See also
- Coffee
- Cannabis coffee shops
- Central Perk
- Bar (establishment)
- Cafeteria
- Coffee Palace
- Coffeehouse (event)
- Diner
- Greasy spoon
- Internet cafe
- Public house
- Manga cafe
- Viennese café
- Kopi tiam, coffee shop of Malaysia and Singapore
- Tea room
- Tea house
- Coffee Palace
- A. K. Gopalan
- Indian Coffee House
[edit] External links
- "indiecoffeeshops.com" US Independent Coffee Shop database
- "Cup of NYC" Independent coffee shops in New York
[edit] References
- Dutch police plan to cut `cannabusiness' in half, The Observer, Amsterdam, Mar. 19, 2005.
- Markman Ellis (2004), The Coffee House: a cultural history, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (Oldenburg): Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You through the Day (New York: Paragon Books, 1989) ISBN 1-56924-681-5
| Coffee |
| Facts about coffee: History of coffee | Economics of coffee | Coffee and health |
| Species and varieties: List of varieties | Coffea arabica: Kenya AA, Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain | Coffea canephora (robusta): Kopi Luwak |
| Major chemicals in coffee: Caffeine | Cafestol |
| Coffee bean processing: Coffee roasting | Home roasting coffee | Decaffeination |
| Common beverage preparation: Espresso (lungo, ristretto) | Drip brew (from coffeemakers) | French press | Turkish coffee | Instant coffee | Chemex | Moka Express |
| Popular coffee beverages: Americano/Long black | Café au lait/Café con leche | Cafe mocha | Ca phe sua da Cappuccino | Greek frappé coffee | Irish coffee | Latte/Flat white | Macchiato (espresso, latte) | Iced Coffee | Red eye |
| Coffee and lifestyle: Social aspects of coffee | Coffeehouse | Caffè | Café | Caffè sospeso
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