CAFÉ ROYAL

The Café Royal stood rather pompously like a regal icon on Regent Street – though the iconic nature of this garish rendezvous had more to do with Louis XIV than Victoria. It was, most definitely French in both food and fashion. That its back door opened out onto the fringes of Soho, however, meant there was another side to the place perhaps a bit more disreputable – appealing to that combination of opposites, the Bohemian Prince or the High-minded Pauper.   more>>>

PISA'S CAFFÉ DELL'USSERO:

A Rendevous for Artists and Writers

In May 1845 John Ruskin prolonged his stay in Pisa in order to draw the early 15th -century Palazzo Agostini on the Lungarno, or river bank, of the Tuscan city. "There is nothing like it in Italy that I know of", he said; and, writing to his father, he added: "They have knocked a great hole in the middle to put up a shield with a red lion and a yellow cock upon it for the sign of a consul, and they have knocked another at the bottom to put up a sign of a soldier riding a horse on two legs, with inscription All'Ussero Café." ...more>>

CAFÉ DES PHARES

Café des Phares overlooks the Place de la Bastille, seemingly oblivious to the noise and the clamour, the soot and grime, the fumes from the endless trail of automobiles that clog this dreary roundabout like metallic litter.... more>>>

COFFEE IN THE NEWS

The week's roudup of coffee related stories >>>

COFFEE TRADE

Upcoming shows and events in Russia, Italy, Britain and the US>>>

It was the scourge of the Ottomans - the Dutch - who first got that bean to grow outside its homeland. Now it had been handed over to the French. What la Roque had witnessed at the Jardin des Plants on that very special Sunday was the Mama tree. It was her progeny that travelled the perilous seas to Dominica. And from there, her grandchildren moved on, jumping from the Caribbean to French Guyana and then to Brazil, becoming the founding nurseries of the great coffee empires of South and Central America. more>>>

COFFEE AND CAFÉS IN AMSTERDAM

A new generation of coffee establishments have taken over from the old 'Brown Cafés'

Sitting in Gary's Muffins, sipping a frothy cappuccino and munching a toasted onion bagel oozing with cream cheese, you might easily be in San Francisco or New York. The fact that you're in Amsterdam isn't all that surprising since the energetic duo who launched this thriving little chain are Americans - one from the East coast and the other from the West. But the open, light, friendly and relaxed ambience at Gary's couldn't be more in contrast to the dour, dark and often dingy Brown Cafés where Amsterdamers have traditionally congregated...more>>