Portrait of a café
It’s an unusually chilly morning, and the citizens of Paris are lingering for longer than usual over their morning coffee and croissants. Newspapers are spread out on the bar in front of men in suits and ties, and groups of friends slide into the leather-upholstered banquettes after greeting each other with enthusiastic kisses, exclamations over the cold weather, and many disapproving head shakes over the strike. There are no tourists here, only locals. They banter with the staff while standing around the worn, zinc-topped bar sipping strong coffee from tiny cups, and they call out greetings as the heavy door creaks open every few minutes.
The café looks like it hasn’t changed much since at least the nineteen-fifties. It’s tucked onto a narrow, unassuming street, announcing its presence only with the slightly faded hand-lettered signs in its windows. It would be easy to keep on walking right past the entrance, although everyone in the neighbourhood seems drawn towards its heavy double doors. Inside, the interior is dim in that welcoming, perfectly cozy way. There are dusty wine bottles lining shelves along one of the walls, and an old espresso machine is a prominent fixture behind the bar. Clusters of mis-matched tables and chairs are arranged haphazardly across a patterned tile floor, while the day’s menu is scrawled in loopy cursive script on chalkboards hung amongst faded photographs from another era. The café is not chic by any stretch of the imagination – there is no terrace outside, only a handful of tiny tables lining the sidewalk in good weather, and there is none of the “see-and-be-seen” feeling that one gets when walking into an establishment in one of the particularly upscale areas of the city.
This is the café as it was originally intended – a neighbourhood institution; a place to eat breakfast in the morning, to linger over lunch or dinner with a group of friends, or stop for a glass or two of wine after the work day wraps up. And somehow, time slows down inside while the rest of the world becomes oddly irrelevant.
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