Coffeehouse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- This article is about an establishment where coffee is sold and consumed. For other uses, see Coffeehouse (disambiguation).
A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or cafe (also spelled café from the French or caffè from the Italian) shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks. Other food may range from baked goods to soups and sandwiches, other casual meals, and light desserts. In some countries, cafes may 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 places where it is tolerated, notably the Netherlands, Christiania in Copenhagen, and certain parts of Canada, cannabis is enjoyed as well.
An essential part of a coffeehouse from its beginnings has been its social functions, providing a place where people go to congregate, talk, write, read, play games, or while away time individually or in small groups.
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History
In Persia, since the 16th century, the coffeehouse (qahveh-khaneh) has served as a social gathering place where men assemble to drink coffee or tea, listen to music, play chess and backgammon, perhaps hear a recitation from the Shahnameh. In modern Iran, coffeehouses may attract a male crowd to watch the public TV.
The traditional tale of the origins of Viennese coffeehouses begins from the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks full 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. It has the ring of apocrypha to skeptics who find the story too pat— and the date too late.
Coffeehouses first became popular in Europe upon the introduction of coffee in the 17th century. The first London coffeehouse opened in Cornhill in 1652; Boston had its first in 1670, and Paris in 1671. The Cafe Le Procope [1], which was founded in Paris in 1689, is still in business: it was a major locus of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot used to frequent it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia. Though Charles II later tried to suppress them as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers" (a criticism that was accurate - both the French and American revolutions were largely plotted in coffeehouses), the public flocked to them. They were great social levellers, open to all (except, generally, women), 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. 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, 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, whence 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. Lloyd's of London started in a coffeehouse. 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.
Contemporary Coffeehouses
The current spate of chain coffee shops such as Starbucks, Peet's, Seattle's Best Coffee, The Coffee Bean and Second Cup have a clear lineal descent from the espresso and pastry centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian-American immigrant communities in the major US 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, largely countercultural coffeehouse scene; Starbucks cleaned up, standardized, genericized, and "mainstreamed" this model.
The liquor laws in many areas in the United States generally prevent anyone under the age of 21 from entering bars, so coffeehouses in that country can often be important youth gathering places.
Since approximately the Beat era, the term coffeehouse has come to imply the availability of espresso drinks, and while "coffee shop" still could suggest an establishment where one would buy coffee, there has been an evolution so that it now suggests "diner" more than coffee-drinking hang-out per se.
Starting in the 1980s, 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 just 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.
Contemporary Cafés
In the United States, café (from the French word for coffee) is a small restaurant. Styles of cafés 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 cafés may or may not serve alcoholic beverages, and the serving of coffee may be incidental to the serving of food.
In France, a "café" certainly serves alcoholic beverages. French cafés also often serve simple snacks (sandwiches etc...). They may or may not have a restaurant section. A brasserie is a café that serves meals, generally single dishes, in a more relaxed setting than a restaurant. A "bistro" is a café / restaurant, especially in Paris. Bistro food is supposed to be cheap, but in recent years bistros, especially in Paris, have become increasingly expensive.
Cafés 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 cafés: those that specialize in coffee and hot beverages, and those with a full menu, the most famous examples of which are the "French cafés," especially those in Paris.
Cafés, in warmer days, may have an outdoor part (terrace, pavement or sidewalk café) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafés. See also public space.
Cafés offer a more open public space 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 will oversaturate an area so as to drive overall profits up while lowering the profits of individual establishments.
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 contemporary-styled venue is a youthful, modern, outward-looking place, compared to the traditional pubs, or old-fashioned diners that they replaced. In the mid 2000s, of course, many mainstream cafes offer Internet access, just as they offer telephones and newspapers.
Cannabis coffee shops
Some coffee shops, however, especially in the Netherlands, are places where selling of cannabis for personal consumption by the public is tolerated by the local authorities. Any establishment advertising itself as a "coffeeshop" (as opposed to a café) in the Netherlands is likely primarily in the business of selling cannabis products and possibly other substances which are tolerated under the drug policy of the Netherlands.
The selling of cannabis is tolerated (Dutch: gedoogd, that is: the law is not enforced) under the nationwide general rules:
- No alcohol
- No minors
- No hard drugs
- No advertisement
- No weapons
The rule about the sale of alcohol is less enforced now in some of the tourist areas of Amsterdam. In June 05 there were coffeeshops in the red light district openly selling alcohol and cannabis in the same shop. Others found ways round the rules e.g. the Greenhouse Effect Coffeeshop which has a coffee shop and bar, both called the Greenhouse Effect, and both of which allow customers to bring products from one in the other, to the extent of the bar having bongs for customer use.
They are called coffee shops because they do not have an alcohol serving licence but do actually serve coffee. Coffeeshops are strongly controlled by the government, and any shop selling soft drugs to minors, or selling hard drugs at all, is immediately closed. These institutions provide non-contaminated (and hence relatively safe) cannabis products, which may not be true of dealers acting illegally. Cannabis and any food products containing cannabis are generally clearly identified to prevent accidental consumption.
(In the Netherlands, an outlet called a "koffiehuis", spelt with a k (literally "coffee house") is more similar to what is called a coffee shop in the U.S., whilst a "café" is the equivalent of a bar.) Dutch coffee shops often fly red-yellow-green Ethiopian flags or other symbols of the Rastafari movement to indicate that they sell cannabis, as direct advertising of cannabis sale is illegal. This aesthetic attracted many public artists who get commissions to create murals in the coffee shops and use the Rastafari and reggae related imagery to provoke public discussion about racial and multicultural issues.
Many municipalities have a coffee shop policy. For some this is a "zero policy", i.e. they do not allow any. Most of such municipalities are either controlled by strict Protestant parties, or are bordering Belgium and Germany and simply do not wish to receive "drug tourism" from those countries. A March 19, 2005 article in the Observer noted that the number of Dutch cannabis coffeehouses had dropped from 1,500 to 750 over the previous five years, largely due to pressure from the conservative coalition government [2]. The "no-growth" policies of many Dutch cities affect new licensing. This policy slowly reduces the number of coffeeshops, since no one can open a new one after a closure.
In nearby Denmark it seems that the coffee shops in the Freetown Christiania will be abolished in 2005 or 2006, as part of the wider issues involved with Free Christiania.
See also
- List of coffeehouse chains
- Bar (establishment)
- Cafeteria
- Coffeehouse (event)
- Diner
- Greasy spoon
- Public house
- Internet cafe
- Manga cafe
- Viennese Café
- Kopi tiam, coffee shop
External links
- An overview of all coffee shops in Amsterdam
- Lemming's Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory
- Dead Cafe Society Wiki
- The internet in a cup
- Persian coffeehouses
- "Specialty Coffee Retailer" A free source of industry news for the independent coffeeshop owner.
- Sufi Coffee Shop
- "Coffee: the Wine of Islam" Coffee's origins and history in the Sufi world.
- "The Cafe Guide" The Worldwide Guide to Cafes
- "The English Coffee Houses"
- Coffeehouse Spirituality
- Thomas Jordan, "News from the Coffeehouse"
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 & Nicholson
- Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You through the Day (New York: Paragon Books, 1989) ISBN 1569246815
