8 posts tagged “cafe life”

Last week I started my journey to find a good DFW café not unlike Paris cafés.

First stop: The Cultured Cup.

This shop features tea, specifically Mariage Frères tea and several of my students recommended it. I went last Friday around noon.

First, like the Starbucks café I posted about, The Cultured Cup clearly sends the message that it is first and foremost about selling tea, coffee, and related items, rather than being solely perceived as a "café." The windows are full of goods, as are the free-standing racks just inside the doorway and the shelves throughout the store.

There are only a few places to sit and enjoy the tea or coffee on sale. One is a sofa and a couple of soft chairs; when I entered, someone was sitting there and working on his laptop. Which meant that I couldn't sit in that space: too narrow and close to sit with a stranger. Plus the table in the center was piled with more goods: couldn't see how to use it. The other seating area is a bar at the rear, with four high chairs: I sat here.

I ordered a pot of tea, choosing from among many, many canisters of M.F. tea flavors. It was brewed right in from of me from loose tea. The tea was delicious, but the ambiance was hardly "café": too noisy, too goods-oriented, too few places to sit, no eats beyond Belgian chocolates--which looked delicious.

So: a café it is not. I won't go back there for an in-house cup of coffee or a pot of tea.

It is a great place to buy loose tea and any kind of tea accessories you need. You can find black tea, green tea, red tea, white tea, and infusions; you will also get great advice about the tea and accessories, which can be very helpful if you want to learn about tea but feel intimidated by the variety now available. I heard one of the in-house personnel explaining to a customer about various types of green tea, and then to another customer about good brewing habits. Fabulous!

And the Leonidas chocolates, imported from Belgium, are certainly a temptation, as are the varieties of coffee (caffeinated and decaffeinated). Even given their website, the point seems to be educating their customers about tea, coffee, and chocolate, then selling same, then the notion of a café for sitting and relaxing... actually enjoying their products in-house. too bad, because they have great products.

Pearl

 

From my observations on food and eating in Paris, you might have guessed that I am not a fancy-dress kind of woman when it comes to dining out. I admit: I love to eat out, simply because some days I really need someone to prepare, serve, and remove your dinner, without clean-up on my part. Sigh.

My two favorite luxuries: room service and taxicabs.

But I digress... again.

Lucky's is the place I eat breakfast on Sunday.

It is a cafe--in my sense, which means it serves low maintenance food prepared simply but deliciously. The French toast: great. The grilled cheese sandwich: O.M.G. Simple, American food, served at tables and booths; I prefer a booth. The waiteers are friendly, the cooking is quick and tasty, and the normal crowd interesting without being weird or intrusive.

While I was in Paris, I did miss Lucky's, much like I still miss the coffee shops of NYC from my youth. Something about scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, roast chicken, and apple pie at any hour, night or day, served with a thick china mug of coffee--yum!

Pearl

Today, I had to fill about 45 minutes prior to a dentist's appointment; for once, I was a bit early and he was running late, so I went around the corner to a nearby Starbuck's to kill time with a grande drip.

See how quickly I have fallen back into "Starbuck speak"?

After I got my coffee, doctored it up, and sat with a book to read, I found myself instead watching the interplay within the shop. And I started to consider how this American cafe was different from a Paris cafe--as it obviously is--and what the geography and semantics of the shop demonstrated.

My first thought is that Starbucks (and much of modern consumer culture) owes a debt to the Romans, which it is probably unaware of. The Romans (as far as I know) invented the notion of "chaining," of engineering urban sites for common actions that fit a constant, familiar pattern of architecture and organization. In other words, a Roman theatre looked the same inside and out whether it was located in Tunesia, France, Lebanon, or Rome (for the most part). Romans visiting a theatre anywhere throughout the Empire would feel at home, while colonized people would feel conquered. This holds true for Americans abroad in American-export chains: McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Starbucks. Which is why some American tourists drop into the Starbucks cafes in Paris (a little reminder of home) and why some avoid it. This Starbucks I was in was familiar in that same sense, not only because I had been in it before, but because the architecture, interior decoration, and branding logos were like those found in any Starbucks, anywhere on the planet. If I had been dropped into it, blindfolded, by only question would be, where?

This is unlike the typical French cafe, which is a unique site. The French cafe is conventional in the sense that it usually (almost always) offers: many places to sit, usually tables and 4-legged chairs, but sometimes cushy chairs (but the footprint of each table-chair combination is small for maximum numbers), a bar, a kitchen in back, windows on the street and usually an outdoor seating area (usually, again, all-weather) where chairs face the street. However, each one is its own site, with individual decorating choices of colors, fabrics, etc. One recognizes a cafe as a cafe (or bistrot, or tabac, or brasserie), because of the opportunities for sitting and having a leisurely drink or meal.

These are actually two methods of getting to the same end: new places that seem familiar and encourage patronage through that appeal to familiarity.

Second, a Starbucks site is a shop, not a cafe. The cafe (area for sitting and enjoying coffee stuff on-site) within each Starbucks (or any other American cafe) is only a secondary site of enterprise. The main action is to sell. Not only coffee drinks to go (or stay) but everything else related to coffee- and tea-drinking. Witness:

And

Including the newspaper stand and cash register areas, I counted six distinct areas with stuff to buy, including books and CDs. Ironically, there were also six places to sit.

There were four little tables--lined up in a row--with two big soft chairs at the end of this row, on the right in a cubby and my chair, solo by the hall to the back. In this particular shop, the ambiance is not about sitting and reading, staying, taking your time and enjoying. That said, I have been in Starbucks where that is a larger part of the geography and where patrons (including me) lingered for hours; I go to one every Saturday morning to write.

Still, having been a recent patron of French cafes, I can note some significant differences with this version of coffee-drinking.

First, the French don't do takeaway coffee. The Starbucks in Paris, for example, are still an anomaly and the only place I got takeaway coffee was McDonalds. Drinking coffee provides space and time eased into the day. Most people who come in to Starbucks take away, rather than sit, which brings coffee into nearly every activity Americans do. I take coffee in the car, into the classroom, into the movies, into Target, etc. Here, coffee has become the portable beverage.

Second, Starbucks allows you to have your beverage your way: half-caff, soy milk, no foam, etc. Drip coffee, latte, espresso, americano, etc. In Paris, one has a much more limited choice.

Third, the French do not buy ground or bean coffee in a cafe. They buy it at the grocery store or speciality shop: the actions of drinking and making are not overlapped in the same site. In a cafe, the French are buying (so to speak) a coffee and its enjoyment with a view, the waiter service, and time. In Starbucks, one buys coffee (prepared or for preparation) as its own product and the convenience of getting it. The French do not want to one-stop-shop; Americans love it. It is entirely a matter of how we look at time.

One of the great aspects of Starbucks as an American phenomenon is that in general the coffee one buys in restaurants and coffee bars tastes better than it did pre-Starbucks. And tea! Man, tea drinkers must get down and thank Starbucks every day for bringing us out of the Lipton teabag era and into white, green, red, and herbal teas as well as mutiple versions of tea drinks, tea preparation, and tea stuff.

The question is perhaps the underlying agenda. Starbucks focuses on the sale of tangible products: prepared drinks, foods, and related products (including CDs and books that suggest "cafe ambiance" as take-away) for convenience and a bit of luxury (coffee that costs $3.00 a cup--but everyone can afford $3.00, even of you cannot afford high-end luxury goods). French cafes sell food and drink as part of a intangible but fixed ambiance of time connected to leisure, social culture, and the enjoyment of small but intense pleasures (again, 2.50 euros for a cup = that same $3.00). In one case I get a vente (20 oz. perhaps) and in the other a p'tit cafe (about 4 oz) but the pleasure comes from my cultural perception of the product: convenience or leisure, quantity vs, quality, a caffeine jolt vs., well, a caffeine jolt.

In Paris, I love the whole cafe ritual: ordering, the arrival of the cup, saucer, and spoon, the chocolate or cookie tucked on the side. In low-end cafes, there are still these touches that make the event special. I love to go to Cafe Flore because the china is so pretty and the waiter always brings a glass of ice water with the coffee--I pay 4 euros for the extra care, but I don't mind because the view is great, the ambience is wonderful, the history is facinating, and the coffee tastes good as well.

In Starbucks, I love the routine, the convenience, the quick service, and that I can pick up beans or a grinder if I need to.

I admit I miss the Paris cafes: surprise! And the possiblity that I can wander into a new one any day, any time. In DFW we have Starbucks, La Madeleine's, Cafe Brazil, and other chains that serve the purpose. Even Barnes & Nobles or Borders utilize in-house cafes to encourage selling more books. I am going to continue searching for the spirit of Paris cafes here in DFW, while also enjoying what makes our cafes uniquely American.

I may start with the one in our own atrium.

Pearl

This morning, I decided the make a change in my routine. Instead of going to the local market in the 'burb, I went over to Bastille to take in the market at Boulevard Richard Lenoir. It is one of my favorite markets in Paris, in part because it sells so much more than food: clothing, wine, jewelry, housewares, tableclothes and aprons, shoes, and gadgets. There is great people-watching as well, but I must admit I missed my 'burb market and the lady with the eggs and the man with the olives. But this market near Bastille is also the home of the tastiest poulet roti to be found in Paris--in my opinion.

Before the market, however, I went to another of my favorite places, conveniently located near the market. This is the Place des Vosges.

The Place des Vosges is the oldest square in Paris. It is composed of connected "townhouses," built between 1605 and 1612 by Henri IV. It is, in effect, the first housing project in Europe. Granted, it was built for the nobility, but the idea was a very modern one for the early 17th century.

It is an actual square in measurement, where the brick houses form an outer ring and a fenced park, open to the public, sits at the center.

I find it very pleasant to sit at the northwest corner at Ma Bourgogne to have a breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice, one of the best croissants to be found in the city, and a double café. It is a splurge, because the restauant is too expensive. (Don't come for lunch or dinner--the food is trés cher and not that delicious. Instead, go around the corner to rue de Turenne for some wonderful and reasonable cafés.) It is a great place to sit and watch the foot traffic into and out of the park, as well as around the place itself.

This is the northwest corner, where I entered the place. Each house is five stories, including the ground level which fronts, as you can see, with an arcade. You can't see that the arcade has a vaulted ceiling. For some time during the 80s and into the 90s, the houses here fell into disrepair; it is within the last 15 years or so that this has again become an elegant place to live, like the rest of the Marais district. Now, chic art galleries and shops as well as very expensive restaurants fill the shopfronts on the ground level. 

The tallest house here is the southern entry, as you can see with three arches that lead from the rue de Birague into the square. As you can see, each of the attached houses is made of red brick and stone, with blue slate roofs, steeply slanted in the French style. Although they look alike each house is distinctive, with some difference in the stonework, the window treatment or shape, or the bricking.

You can easily see how these two, on the western face, are different.

There are four fountains, all of which work, but only two were flowing today.

At the center, there is a statue of Louis XIII.

My favorite part of this is the tree trunk piercing the belly of the horse to (I guess?) hold him upright? Seems a sad statement to Louis XIII's puissance that a tree trunk had to prop up his horse...

I also enjoy the fact that the face of Louis XIII has been designed to replicate his famous son, Louis XIV. In some ways, I feel sorry for Louis XIII: he was not a very interesting monarch or shining example of father or husband. He has been justifiably overshadowed in history by his father, Henry IV, and his son, Louis XIV. We can't even attribute Louis XIV's greatness to his father's influence, because Louis XIII died when his son was 5, so Louis XIV was raised by his mother, the truly interesting and fearsome Anne of Austria, and his guardian, Cardinal Mazarin, who had in turn learned everything he knew from Cardinal Richelieu.

Personally, I think Louis XIV learned as much from nurture and the events of his childhood as from nature and biology. He was a brilliant king... who reigned too long.

The weather was too chilly today to sit in the park; I did sit and read (Pat Barker's Border Crossing) at Ma Bourgogne where heaters can be found on the terrace. Three different walking tours came by--despite the cold, that is a very Sunday-morning thing to do in Paris.

The place, its houses, and the inner park are simply delightful. One can sit and read, sit and watch, walk, have a coffee or an aperatif. For myself, I think the symmetry appeals to me, as well as the warm color of the brick and the original quirkiness of the idea of a residential square from four centuries ago. I like the notion of something that old remaining so fresh and new to the eye and intelligence.

The Place des Vosges also stands as a symbol of the pleasure Parisians take in simply living in this moment and surrounding themselves with pleasant places to live.

Pearl

After a very looooong 9-6 at the library (Tolbiac and microfilm, so a combination of grandeur and dust-filled, dry-eyed, mechanical scholarship... not my favorite), I decided to stop at the local 'burb cafe for a glass of wine. Hey, it's Saturday night and I've been at the library 5 days 9-5... or more. Admittedly, I'm a barrel of fun... but--

I sat outside, despite the chill and the rain--actually because of the rain, which sounded really nice on the canvas-and-vinyl cover, and there were heat lamps cooking away--and ordered not wine but champagne. A nice glass of champagne, to celebrate some hard-core research work this week. I feel really good about the direction of my research and the fact that while I am now spending time simply fact-gathering, I will go home in December with a really strong foundation for further fact-gathering and the beginnings of some sophisticated analysis, aided by new readings in gender studies, art history, urban history, and visual studies. Cool, huh?

Here's where I leave the satisfaction of the research glow and enter into... something else.

Next to me are a couple tables of teens, all dressed (a la Paris) in gray and black, skinny as only teenagers can be. There are a couple of girls and five boys, some smokers (people can still smoke in the "outside areas" in cafes) but drinking Cokes, rather than liquor or coffee. Some cell ringing, some texting, some smoking, some chatting, a couple of kids shifting seats. No big. Everyone gets up to go, except one boy and one girl. I noticed that earlier she had gone outside the barrier to smoke with another boy--not romantic, from the look of it, just chat but away from the crowd. Coulnd't figure why, but no one seemed upset.

So then everyone got up and left except the girl who went outside and the boy I realized was "with" her. She was 15 or so, not older, thin, wearing black converse sneakers, crocheted tights, shorts (huh?) and a short woolen jacket, with long hair and kohl-circled eyes. He was wearing a cap, worn jeans hanging around his butt, Converse sneakers, and a puffy jacket with a hood. She got up and he followed her, saying something that clearly upset her. He grabbed her sleeve, then her arm at that point, to make her stay near him. 

They were stopped by the waiter at the door to the inside area, and the waiter looked to be telling the boy to calm down, to stop saying whatever he had been syaing to the girl, who looked like she was going to cry. She also looked as if she was trying to get away from the boy, maybe going to the toilets inside for some privacy, but the boy was having none of it and the waiter wasn't going to let them carry their scene into the interior.

After a few minutes, the couple backed off from the waiter a few steps, and the argument continued, in soft voices. But the boy was doing all the talking. The girl looked upset and her voice, when she spoke, sounded as if she would cry, high and wobbly.

A second waiter gestured them outside, and they went. Then they stood outside, same scenario. The boy looked as if he was bullying her--seriously--and she looked as if she was trying to calm him down. Finally, they walked over to his scooter, and he got on. But he wouldn't let her on, just kept bitching at her, while she stood there. Finally, he let her on and they roared off.

And I thought... who is teaching her how to handle this kind of public scenario with self-respect? Which includes the following:

• always have enough money for your own cab or bus home
• always have enough money or a charged cell for a call to someone to pick you up
• always have a clear boundary about when the line is crossed between being a girlfriend and being abused
• always be ready to walk away--without a fight, without a final pithy remark, without closure (which is a trap)
• the notion that because sometimes he says he loves you or sometimes he acts like he doesn't hate you isn't a basis for a relationship

I watched this girl and saw a child who was completely naked and vulnerable in this moment: completely unprepared to do anything except try and "make it right" with someone who, apparently, didn't want to have it "made right" unless he got to say all the mean things he wanted. This boy's face--it was not pleasant. And the fact that he knew enough to keep his voice pitched so she could hear it but no one else could, so if she did cry or do anything, she would look as if she was making a scene, emotional, a problem... that's experience. Not the first time this has happened between them, because the givaway was the lack of surprise on her face that he was doing this. That only happens once.

I could feel myself as a sixteen-year old, thinking this boy on the other end of the argument or the other end of the phone was THE most important thing in the world, and that I had to keep him, no matter what, make him happy, make it right, cealr up the misunderstanding, because I HAD to. Not thinking deeply, just feeling, and so aware that my whole self was wrapped up in his approval somehow: so where had my self-esteem, my self-protection gone? And why, when this boy was no more or less special than I was?

Oh, I forgot one last point about handling a public scenario:

• always be prepared to make a scene, especially in front of strangers

I see this with my students, too: kids are so fragile and they have less experience, fewer coping mechanisms. Sometimes the coping mechanism is meanness (like the boy) and sometimes it is placating (like the girl). But I have to say: the placating gives me the willies. Not that I haven't done it in my time--I have, which is why I know it won't solve the problem. Who is teaching this girl to treat herself with self-respect, even if it means being without the boy? Who is teaching this girl any escape mechanism for a later time, when he gets meaner? Who is teaching him that it is acceptable to talk to her like that, look at her like that, treat her like that?

I don't know. And maybe I am over-reacting to a teenage dating spat. (Don't think so: seen too much in my time.) But I do know neither the waiters nor anyone else in that cafe--including me--could do anything to help either of those kids tonight, since they didn't want or ask for help... Who's going to teach her when to ask for help?

Pearl

Monday was a delightful and successful day. I finally went to see the exhibition at the Opéra Garnier, Image[s] de la danse, that includes drawings, lithographs, photographs, paintings, sculpture, and film of the dance and dancers, as well as two costumes, both from Swan Lake. This exhibition, like the conference I attended in Glasgow, concerns the problem of capturing the ephemeral nature of performance through visual media. It also interrogates the difference between the dancer and the dance, and the dancer outside performance: rehearsal, personal life, etc.

If you are in Paris, I recommend seeing the exhibition. It will be open into January 2009. I recommend it not only because it is well located in the part of town most tourists visit, but the ticket includes not only the exhibition but the interior of the Opéra Garnier. Worth the price!

The exhibition was right up my alley and very relevant to the work I am doing here, this time about ballerinas and dancers. 

I have already written about the Opéra Garnier, but this time I went in and around and about. Here are some of my photographs (see the rest on Flickr).

 

 

 

 

If you buy a ticket for an unsupervised visit, you can wander at will, rather than be forced to wait for, then follow a guide. There is a limited number of tourguides, so people who entered with me were still waiting for a tour when I left... 90 minutes later. And I am not all that certain how factual or effective the tour is. My advice: get yourself a good guidebook (the Michelin Green Guide is the best) and see the place at your own pace. My only warning is that the bookstore closes for lunch, 12:30 to 2 pm, so shop accordingly.

And it is a good shop, especially for recordings and things for kids who might love ballet, orchestral music, or opera.

After this, I bought a lunch salad of mozzarella, tomato, basil and raw ham (again, the prosciutto-like ham) and took it over to the Tuileries to eat. Found an empty chair near a fountain, ate lunch, enjoyed the traffic and the last vestiges of the sun.

I walked around for a while in the gardens, but it was windy and chilly, and the clouds were closing in. I did stop to watch three kids chase wooden sailboats around a pool. They were having a lot of fun racing around and around, pushing their boats away from the edge: they expended a lot of energy!

 

I ended the day by browsing the Louvre bookstore--an excellent resource for art and period texts--and then having a coffee on Place Colette at one of my favorite cafes while reading two chapters in a key text I am re-reading for sources and inspiration in my work on actresses. While there, the rain really came down and the air turned chilly--and I still sat at an outside table! but there was one moment when the sun came out and shone on the House of Molière.

A very satisfying day, ended by more reading and transcribing back in the 'burbs.

Pearl

Yesterday, I ate this delicious salad at a brasserie in Montparnasse. I was having lunch after seeing the film MARRIED LIFE, also near Montparnasse.

The French do salad better than anyone. This one had what the menu referred to as "raw ham," which is the pile of prosciutto-like meat on top, goat cheese rounds toasted into brown bread and sprinkled with chopped hazlenuts, sauteed potatoes, tomato slices drizzled with vinaigrette, and a healthy pile of butter lettuce underneath everything. All of it was fresh and delicious. I could only eat about 2/3rds of it.

I like to sample the warm goat cheese salads when eating out around Paris, but in general, salads are not only a great value for the money (tourist friends, take note!) but are fresh, tasty, and filing. They are a main course without depriving oneself. The only dangerous elements one might find are potatoes, which are not an ingredient I enjoy on my green salads, usually, or "lardons" which the French consider bacon but which are really chunks of very flavorful and fatty ham. The flavor comes from the freshness and combination of the ingredients, rather than the dressing.

In any cafe, bistrot, or brasserie  the menu will have several salads to choose from. There is usually a green salad, and one with ham, often including cheese. There might be a chicken choice, an all-vegetable choice (including marinated or steamed veggies like green beans or mini-corn), a tuna choice, and a warm goat cheese choice. Even, possibly, a more "exotic" fish choice with herring or anchovies. They must be eaten with a knife and fork and rarely need salt.

If you are on a tight budget with either money or calories, adding one of these to your day will help. Plus nearly every salad I've had in Paris has been delightful in some respect, and encourages me to come back and try something more difficult. Like the poulet roti.

Pearl  

I left you on the south side of the Ile de la Cite, walking by the gendarmes (keep moving, nothing here to see!). At the Pont St. Michel I crossed the bridge and began walking along the left bank of the Seine eastward.

Why? My batteries crashed on the point-and-shoot, so I was looking for a tabac to buy more.

So, there's a bit of a gap from the Place Dauphine to my purchase of said batteries in said tabac (les epiles, I learned. Or rather re-learned, because I knew the word, I just didn't know it at the moment when it counted. Anyone?).

But armed with said les epiles I got some great pictures of the eastern end of Notre Dame as the sun rose. Unretouched.

I walked along the eastern bridge of Ile de la Cite and came to rest in a little cafe facing that back end, watching the sun make those lovely buildings glow. It was chilly, sitting there, despite the excellent people-watching, and it if definitely the season not only for cafes to have their outdoor heaters present, but turned on. 

And for me to buy socks and possibly better sneakers: I inadvertantly left mine in Oxford. I hope the staff enoyed them.

Along the Rue de Rivoli there are some great shoe stores, and so I strolled there. Tried on shoes, watched other women try on shoes and boots, tried to reconcile my aversion to "all things patent leather" that makes every shoe, shootie, and boot, no matter what color and style shee-iny... but no luck. Ducked into BHV for a stroll through the 1st floor's paper goods (I did tell you I am a paper-good addict right?). Bought post-its, stickers, purple paper storage boxes, and notebooks: a whole pile of pretty, pretty things.

This section was amazingly crowded for mid-day Friday (by now, it was slightly pre-noon). Many people were fondling stationery, cooing over storage boxes, and staring dazedly at the pen selection. I guess lots of people actually share this addiction. I'd get into a 12-step program, but I don't have the right coil-top notebook and gel-ink pen for it. That'll take another trip... and a write-on calendar and markers for the ease of rescheduling meeting times and places.

Anyway, after that I continued shopping. (When did a lovely stroll along the Seine become shopping?) However, I felt incredibly successful because I found the shoes I needed/wanted, the paper goods, and a pair of readers to replace the broken ones in the studio. Score!

Oh, and resisted these guys.

Between the books, the postcards, and the Steinlein cat stuff like coasters, I am toast. (Keep moving, nothing here to see!) 

All in all, a gorgeous, wonderful day that oddly included succssful shopping. What can Saturday bring?

Pearl