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Coffeehouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Coffeehouse[a] (French/Portuguese: café; Spanish: cafetería or café; Italian: caffè, German: Café or Kaffeehaus, Greek: Καφενείο or Καφετέρια, Turkish: Kahvehane) or coffee shop (from Arabic: qahwa) is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. ...
This article is about the establishment that serves coffee. For the social event, see
Coffeehouse (event).
Coffeehouse[a] (
French/
Portuguese:
café;
Spanish:
cafetería or
café;
Italian:
caffè,
German:
Café or
Kaffeehaus,
Greek:
Καφενείο or
Καφετέρια,
Turkish:
Kahvehane) or
coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a
bar, and some of the characteristics of a
restaurant, but it is different from a
cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing
coffee and
tea as well as light snacks. This differs from a
café, which is an informal restaurant, 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 (
Nargile in Turkish), flavored tobacco smoked through a
hookah. In establishments where it is tolerated - which may be found notably in the
Netherlands, especially in
Amsterdam -
cannabis may be smoked as well.
From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups of 2 or 3.
[edit] History
The Ottoman chronicler
İbrahim Peçevi reports the opening of the first coffeehouse in Istanbul:
| “ | Until the year 962 [1555], in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffee-houses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale, and began to purvey coffee.[1] | ” |
Various legends involving the introduction of coffee to Istanbul at a "Kiva Han" in the late 15th century circulate in culinary tradition, but with no documentation.
[2]
Coffeehouses in
Mecca soon became a concern as places for political gatherings to the imams who banned them, and the drink, for Muslims between 1512 and 1524. In 1530 the first coffee house was opened in
Damascus,
[3] and not long after there were many coffee houses in
Cairo.
In the 17th century,
coffee appeared for the first time in
Europe outside the
Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established and quickly became popular. The first coffeehouses in
Western Europe appeared in
Venice, due to the trafficks between
La Serenissima and the Ottomans; the very first one is recorded in 1645. The first coffeehouse in
England was set up in
Oxford in 1650 by a
Jewish man named Jacob in the building now known as "The Grand Cafe". A plaque on the wall still commemorates this and the Cafe is now a trendy cocktail bar.
[4] Oxford's
Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is also still in existence today. The first coffeehouse in
London was opened in 1652 in St Michael's Alley,
Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the
Armenian servant of a trader in
Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment
[5][6].
Boston had its first in 1670. Pasqua Rosée also established
Paris' first coffeehouse in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until
Procopio Cutò opened the
Café Procope in 1686.
[7] This coffeehouse still exists today and was a major meeting place of the French
Enlightenment;
Voltaire,
Rousseau, and
Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the
Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia. Vienna's first coffee house was opened by the Greek Johannes Theodat in 1685. 15 years later, four Greek owned coffeehouses had the privilege to serve coffee.
[8]
Though
Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the
Wits gathered round
John Dryden at
Will's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden. The coffee houses were great social levellers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, 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
London Gazette (government announcements) read.
Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by
Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739 there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as
Tories and
Whigs, wits and
stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the
old city center. According to one French visitor,
Antoine François Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."
[citation needed]
The banning of women from coffeehouses was not universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe. In Germany women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned.
[9].
Émilie du Châtelet purportedly wore drag to gain entrance to a coffeehouse in Paris
[10] In a well-known engraving of a Parisian coffeehouse of c. 1700,
[11] 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,
separated in a canopied booth, from which she serves coffee in tall cups.
The traditional tale of the origins of the
Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the
Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious
Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers,
Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki. Kulczycki began the first coffeehouse in
Vienna with the hoard. However, it is now widely accepted that the first coffeehouse was actually opened by an Greek merchant named Johannes Diodato
[5].
In London, coffeehouses preceded the
club of the mid-18th century, which skimmed away some of the more aristocratic clientele.
Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the
London Stock Exchange. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of
Sotheby's and
Christie's. In
Victorian England, the
temperance movement set up coffeehouses for the
working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the
public house (pub).
Coffee shops in the United States arose from the
espresso- and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the
Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. 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
countercultural coffeehouse scene; Starbucks standardized and mainstreamed this model.
The first Starbucks store, in Seattle, Washington
In the United States, from the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also served as a venue for entertainment, most commonly
folk performers. This was likely due to the ease at accommodating in a small space a lone performer accompanying himself or herself only with a guitar; the political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. A number of well known performers like
Joan Baez and
Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses.
Blues singer
Lightnin' Hopkins bemoaned his woman's inattentiveness to her domestic situation due to her overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing, in his 1969
Coffeehouse Blues.
From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, many churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. They were often storefronts and had names like
The Gathering Place (Riverside, CA),
Catacomb Chapel (New York City), and
Jesus For You (Buffalo, NY). Christian music (guitar-based) was performed, coffee and food was provided, and
Bible studies were convened as people of varying backgrounds gathered in a casual "unchurchy" setting. These coffeehouses usually had a rather short life, about three to five years or so on average.
[citation needed] An out-of-print book, published by the ministry of David Wilkerson, titled,
A Coffeehouse Manual, served as a guide for Christian coffeehouses, including a list of name suggestions for coffeehouses.
[12]
[edit] Format
Coffeehouses in the United States often sell
pastries or other food items
Cafes may have an outdoor section (terrace,
pavement or
sidewalk cafe) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially the case with European cafes. Cafes offer a more open public space compared to many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male dominated with a focus on drinking alcohol.
One of the original uses of the cafe, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the
Internet café or
Hotspot (Wi-Fi). The spread of modern style cafes to many places, urban and rural, went hand in hand with computers. Computers and Internet access in a contemporary-styled venue helps to create a youthful, modern, outward-looking place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced. Coffee shops like
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Peet's now offer free Wi-Fi in most stores.
[edit] International variation
In the Middle East, the coffeehouse (
al-maqhah in
Arabic,
qahveh-khaneh in
Persian or
kahvehane or
kıraathane in
Turkish) serves as an important social gathering place for men. Men assemble in coffeehouses to drink coffee (usually
Arabic coffee) or tea, listen to music, read books, play
chess and
backgammon, and perhaps hear a recitation from the works of
Antar or from
Shahnameh.
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. Coffeehouses are often gathering places for underage youths who cannot go to bars.
In the United Kingdom, traditional coffeehouses as gathering places for youths fell out of favour after the 1960s, but the concept has been revived since the 1990s by chains such as
Starbucks,
Coffee Republic,
Costa Coffee, and
Caffè Nero as places for professional workers to meet and eat out or simply to buy beverages and snack foods on their way to and from the workplace.
In France, a cafe also serves alcoholic beverages. French cafes often serve simple snacks such as sandwiches. They may have a restaurant section. A
brasserie is a cafe that serves meals, generally single dishes, in a more relaxed setting than a restaurant. A
bistro is a cafe / restaurant, especially in Paris.
In Australian cities, a traditional
European cafe culture is thriving as a result of significant immigration from mainland Europe in the 19th century and 20th century. These establishments often cluster along certain streets and with the weather allowing curb side seating much of the year certain areas resemble a large party on a Friday or Saturday evening.
In China, an abundance of recently-started domestic coffeehouse chains may be seen accommodating business people. These coffee houses are more for show and status than anything else, with coffee prices often even higher than in the west.
In Malaysia and Singapore, traditional
breakfast and
coffee shops are called
kopi tiams. The word is a
portmanteau of the
Malay word for
coffee (as borrowed and altered from the
Portuguese) and the
Hokkien dialect word for
shop (店;
POJ: tiàm). Menus typically feature simple offerings: a variety of foods based on
egg,
toast, and
coconut jam, plus
coffee,
tea, and
Milo, a malted chocolate drink which is extremely popular in Southeast Asia and Australasia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia.
In parts of the
Netherlands where the sale of
cannabis is decriminalized, many cannabis shops call themselves
coffeeshops. Foreign visitors often find themselves quite at a loss when they find that the shop they entered to have a coffee actually has a very different
core business. Incidentally, most cannabis shops sell a wide range of (non-alcoholic) beverages.
In modern
Egypt,
Turkey and
Syria, coffeehouses attract many men and boys to watch TV or play chess and smoke
shisha. Coffeehouses are called "ahwa" in Egypt and combine serving
coffee as well as
tea and
herbal teas. Tea is called "shai", and coffee is also called "ahwa". Finally,
herbal teas, like
hibiscus tea (called karkadeh) are also highly popular.
[13]
