Everything about Coffee House totally explained
A
coffeehouse (
French/
Spanish/
Portuguese:
café;
Italian:
caffè,
German:
café or
Kaffeehaus,
Turkish:
Kahvehane) 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's 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, powdered tobacco smoked through a
hookah. In establishments where it's 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.
History
Since the 15th century, the coffeehouse (
al-maqhah in
Arabic,
qahveh-khaneh in
Persian or
Kahvehane or
kıraathane in
Turkish) has served as a social gathering place in
Middle Eastern countries where men assemble 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. In 1457 the first coffeehouse,
Kiva Han, was opened in
Istanbul, just four years after its conquest by the
Ottomans. Coffeehouses in
Mecca soon became a concern as places for political gathering
s 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 (External Link
), 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 traffics 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. Oxford's
Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is 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.
Boston had its first in 1670. Pasqua Rosée also established
Paris' first coffeehouse in 1672 and held a city-wide coffee monopoly until Francesca Procopio dei Coltelli opened The Cafe Le Procope
(External Link)in 1686 . This coffeehouse still exists today and was a major locus of the French
Enlightenment;
Voltaire,
Rousseau, and
Diderot frequented it, and it's arguably the birthplace of the
Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.
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. They 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, the
Abbé Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you've the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."
The banning of women from coffehouses wasn't universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe. In Germany women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned.
Émilie du Châtelet purportedly wore drag to gain entrance to a coffehouse in Paris .
In a well-known engraving of a Parisian coffeehouse of c. 1700
(External Link), 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
Viennese coffeehouses 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's now widely accepted that the first coffeehouse was actually opened by an Armenian merchant named Johannes Diodato.
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.
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 a lone performer accompanying themself only with a guitar, even with limited floorspace; the political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their above-referenced 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),
The Lost Coin (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. 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.
Format
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've 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 cafe 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.
International variation
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 can't 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
kaya (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.
In modern
Egypt,
Turkey and
Syria, coffeehouses attract many men and boys to watch TV or play chess and smoke
shisha.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Coffee House'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://coffeehouse.totallyexplained.com">Coffeehouse Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
)