Melbourne Cafes
Melbourne, Australia, has emerged on the world cultural scene somewhat in the past decade or so to such an extent that it has been visible to me - an Australian, but not from Melbourne - even while living as far afield as Hong Kong, New York and London. Melbourne - what most Australians (notably not including Melbournians) see as Australia's second city after Sydney, is revealing itself as the cultural capital - as it's always been, many would assert.
It is the reigning most liveable city in the world according to The Economist and others No.5 for Monocle magazine also No. 5 on QS Best Student Cities (Paris is no. 2) - and tends to be high on most lists. Everyone who goes there talks of the café scene and the quality of coffee. Honestly, I was sceptical. I'd grown up in Perth where - at that time - aside from a few Italian-Australian run joints in Northbridge such as Cafe Sport (which seems now to have disappeared very sadly) and the Cappuccino Strip in Fremantle which has become an institution in itself, coffee, in a café was a spoon full of Nescafé in a polystyrene cup - don't deny this Perthites: you know it to be true! This has very much changed as of 2017, so that any stone thrown will hit a coffee connoisseur sitting in a quality coffee shop after a couple of bounces even in Perth.
But what about Paris? When I came to live here in 1995 I was impressed by what I thought was the high quality coffee that I would (and do) typically drink standing at the counter at half the price of having it at a table. When I first started hearing of criticisms of the coffee quality, initially from Americans, I was indignant: what, anyway, would they know? Starbucks has become a bit of a joke e.g. Certainly some cafés are better than others I supposed - but I was no real connoisseur myself. I heard from friends who had moved to live in Melbourne about their cherished coffee shops - but I didn't take it seriously. I was very surprised to find that New York friends who had moved there were raving about the coffee and cafés.
Okay - well and good. I've now been living on-and-off in Paris for several of the last 25 years. I was visiting London as a Paris resident very easily can via Eurostar when a friend mentioned as a selling point to his neighbourhood the existence of an Australian style cafe near by. A what? I asked. He explained the background, the concept of 3rd Wave cafés and the fact that there are such cafés actively marketing themselves as Australian- or Melbourne-style, and they are successful not just in London (where there is a strong cultural connection to Australia) but in New York and other US cities. I didn't seriously think that this trend could work, in of all places, Paris... but my friend sent me a link: Aussie-style Cafés in Paris. I actually sent this link around my work-mates in a Paris financial institution - to indignant stunned silence and some offence to most (rather more than I expected) and amusement of the foreigners. (The link to "Why is Coffee in Paris So Bad?" in the New York Times may have been part of the problem).
But is it real? Therefore in the past few months I have taken to bicycling from my base in Boulogne-Billancourt, all over Paris to check these places out and to find others worth mentioning. That, basically, is what this blog is about.
It is the reigning most liveable city in the world according to The Economist and others No.5 for Monocle magazine also No. 5 on QS Best Student Cities (Paris is no. 2) - and tends to be high on most lists. Everyone who goes there talks of the café scene and the quality of coffee. Honestly, I was sceptical. I'd grown up in Perth where - at that time - aside from a few Italian-Australian run joints in Northbridge such as Cafe Sport (which seems now to have disappeared very sadly) and the Cappuccino Strip in Fremantle which has become an institution in itself, coffee, in a café was a spoon full of Nescafé in a polystyrene cup - don't deny this Perthites: you know it to be true! This has very much changed as of 2017, so that any stone thrown will hit a coffee connoisseur sitting in a quality coffee shop after a couple of bounces even in Perth.
But what about Paris? When I came to live here in 1995 I was impressed by what I thought was the high quality coffee that I would (and do) typically drink standing at the counter at half the price of having it at a table. When I first started hearing of criticisms of the coffee quality, initially from Americans, I was indignant: what, anyway, would they know? Starbucks has become a bit of a joke e.g. Certainly some cafés are better than others I supposed - but I was no real connoisseur myself. I heard from friends who had moved to live in Melbourne about their cherished coffee shops - but I didn't take it seriously. I was very surprised to find that New York friends who had moved there were raving about the coffee and cafés.
Okay - well and good. I've now been living on-and-off in Paris for several of the last 25 years. I was visiting London as a Paris resident very easily can via Eurostar when a friend mentioned as a selling point to his neighbourhood the existence of an Australian style cafe near by. A what? I asked. He explained the background, the concept of 3rd Wave cafés and the fact that there are such cafés actively marketing themselves as Australian- or Melbourne-style, and they are successful not just in London (where there is a strong cultural connection to Australia) but in New York and other US cities. I didn't seriously think that this trend could work, in of all places, Paris... but my friend sent me a link: Aussie-style Cafés in Paris. I actually sent this link around my work-mates in a Paris financial institution - to indignant stunned silence and some offence to most (rather more than I expected) and amusement of the foreigners. (The link to "Why is Coffee in Paris So Bad?" in the New York Times may have been part of the problem).
But is it real? Therefore in the past few months I have taken to bicycling from my base in Boulogne-Billancourt, all over Paris to check these places out and to find others worth mentioning. That, basically, is what this blog is about.
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