Cafe Ambiance
The chime of jostled glassware pierces your ear drums in your neighborhood Paris cafe. It strikes through the animated rumble of seductive conversation rising from the two-tops sprinkled throughout the small wood-panelled space and pouring out onto the awning-protected terrace. Men are lined up along the zinc bar, rarely speaking. They’ve come with agendas — shoot down the morning espresso, catch up on the headlines and assess the betting odds. This is your neighborhood Parisian cafe.
Don’t forget to indulge in the pleasant, and obligatory, chat with the barman. Greetings are far more powerful in Paris than any “green” you might flash, and spread far more joy. Being connected to community, with staccato joviality, is ritualized.
The barman serves as waiter and busker when not drawing your coffee or pulling the odd pint for an unlucky sod on chomage (unemployment). His voice is almost as piercing as that of the glassware, but warmer.
The Reward
A formule petit déjeuner (breakfast deal) arrives — my standard order is a café allongé (somewhere between a double espresso and an americano in the hierarchy of strength and taste, depending on the source), a fresh-squeezed orange juice and a croissant still warm from the oven. The addition (receipt) is dropped at the same time, curled up in a tin pail. This isn’t done to rush you. Rather, it gives you the option to depart at your leisure, by simply leaving your money in the pail instead of waiting to get the barman’s attention. Trust is implicit.
Depending on how you’ve timed your arrival, and the degree to which you’ve been accepted as a regular, you can stay here for hours. Only with the arrival of cutlery on nearby empty tables are you cued to bundle up your journal, laptop or other morning pastime. If you dawdle too much into the all-important lunch hour, you will be asked to leave. Do what you can to avoid making the staff act rudely like this. They hate doing it, but business is, eventually and begrudgingly, business.