French Fridays: Yes, you can get a decent coffee in Paris (eat. live. travel. write.)

This year marks 20 years since I left home and moved to Paris where I ended up staying over 5 years. Since I left in 2000, I have had the good fortune to have visited the city fairly regularly and one of the things I have noticed, especially over the past few years is how the coffee scene has changed. When I moved to Paris in early 1995, decent coffee was nowhere to be found. the whole idea of the “café culture” sounded so romantic yet the reality was that whilst sitting on a café terrace people watching for a few hours was a great way to pass the time, the coffee that accompanied this activity was sub-par (and that’s putting it niucely). Coming from Australia where we I the good fortune to have grown up with a great coffee culture, (thanks to the huge influx of Europeans migrants in the 1950s who brought good quality coffee (espresso) to the country), I had been spoiled. As a high school student, I felt so sophisticated when, on a Friday afternoon, I would gather with my girlfriends at the now defunct Al Fresco Café on Rundle Street (which opened in 1980 and was one of the first in Adelaide to introduce the patio people-watching culture, sadly closing its doors in 2012) and order a cappuccino. We all felt SO sophisticated!

Needless to say, arriving in Paris in 1995 I was a little lost without my daily coffee fix but over the past few years, thanks to some of the newer coffee drinking establishments – often owned and operated by Australians! – I have able to order fabulous coffee – there is so much choice these days and it seems that a new place is popping up every week. No matter where you are staying, you aren’t too far from a decent cortado or flat white.

Here, in no particular order (and this is a work in progress and obviously not an exhaustive list) are some of my favourite places to enjoy my java in Paris:

La Caféothèque de Paris