Finding Good Coffee in Paris

The elusive latte.

The elusive latte.

The clichéd Parisian café. Accordion music play in the background as you idle away an hour or two, people-watching or reading some sort of literature (probably Hemingway), nursing a tiny espresso or equally tiny glass of wine, basking in the glory that is Paris and the luxury of wasting time in it. While this is all wonderful, finals week during grad school has eliminated such luxury for me, and sent me roaming the city in search of a more laptop-friendly café. And to be honest, Paris has a bit of a problem with those tiny espressos: they are usually really not very good (here's a blog post that explains why). So I took to the Internet, and found the following two beautiful little cafés that serve a variety of high-quality imported coffee, lattes (which the French have decided just don't exist), salads, soups, and baked goods (including chocolate cake!), and feature free WiFi and outlets for laptops.

KB Cafeshop

53 Avenue Trudaine, 9éme

Latte & apricot scone with jam and butter (and a side of eBook studying)

Latte & apricot scone with jam and butter (and a side of eBook studying)

Situated on the corner of a cute little square overlooking the Rue des Martyrs, KB Cafeshop serves amazing coffee (including the gorgeous latte art creation at the top of this post) along with scones, cookies, sandwiches, salads, soups, and even smoothies and juice. That's right, juice has hit Paris.

The thing I love about KB though is the bar along the window that overlooks the square (which happens to be quite festive at the moment). Power strips galore, the bar is the perfect place to park your laptop and get some work done while sipping a gorgeously large latte or artisan drip coffee and munching on an apricot scone or 6€ carrot soup. I spent six hours here today (a Saturday) and the place never got too crowded or loud to work, although in the moments when I looked up from my work to take a people-watching break several different languages (including English) washed over me.

Overlooking the square at Rue des Martyrs

Overlooking the square at Rue des Martyrs

Carrot & basil soup

Carrot & basil soup

Cafe Lomi

3 ter Rue Marcadet, 18éme

Butternut squash soup + couscous veggie salad (and again, a side of eBook)

Butternut squash soup + couscous veggie salad (and again, a side of eBook)

Café Lomi is tucked on the other side of Montmartre, in a hidden part of the eighteenth arrondissement that's slowly becoming one of my favorite Parisian spots. It might be a bit out of the way, but it's worth it for the view of a very different Paris than the clichéd romantic Eiffel Tower version. True to the broken cliché, Café Lomi doesn't fall into the traditional Parisian Café category. It's got sort of a warehouse feel, with a big, beautiful open interior, industrial chic lighting, and even a communal table. Definitely a spot for coffee nerds, the coffee menu offers several different types of beans and brew methods to choose from. And on a misguided search for the bathroom, I accidentally stumbled into the storeroom (much to the horror of the guy working there) and was faced with bags upon bags of beautiful, rich imported coffee...so I know for a fact they're not lying when they say it comes from Kenya. Or Colombia. Or Ethiopia.

They also have an incredible 8.50€ soup/salad combo, a delicious chocolate cake, free (fast!) WiFi, and a view of this really cool graffiti mural on the barbed-wire topped wall across the street...which may or may not house a previous nuclear site, war camp, or factory (the most likely but also the least imaginative).

So until I am freed from the grad school finals burden burying me in 20 pages of unwritten papers, you can find me at either one of these study-spots sipping a beautifully-foamed latte and slurping on winter soup.

Foire des vins

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Fall means many things in France - leaves changing color, roasted chestnuts instead of roasted maize (thankfully, since roasted maize really smells awful), scarves as permanent outfit fixtures, and the harvest of new wines. This last one is my favorite; it results in tastings and fairs popping up all throughout Paris, including one just fifteen minutes from our apartment that featured over 50 producers of wine and artisanal food products (foie gras, sausage, cheese, chocolate, oysters, etc) and endless free tastings.

 

Growing up in Marin County, I'm no stranger to farmer's markets and food festivals. But the variety of markets and fairs we have there is distinctly elitist and yuppie, a specific statement about a facet of society that values farm-to-table as a trend and a social movement. In France, the celebration of agricultural products and wines is just a way of life, historically ingrained in the culture. It feels authentic, especially when you realize some of these vineyards date back to a time before America even existed. The distinct nature of the products at the fair was local, artisanal, and handmade. The producers wanted to talk to us, even across a difficult language barrier, about their products - how they were made, why they tasted in a certain way, where they were located. We were invited to help with next year's harvest, offered to taste as much as we wanted, given advice on what to pair with what. And as a result, we came away with considerably lighter wallets and considerably heavier bags - six bottles of wine, a wedge of Brebis cheese, nine sausages, a handful of macarons, and five meat hand pies. It's not just food. It's a celebration of life, and ways of life, that are distinctly French.

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