Parisian café

[1] Typical Parisian cafés are not coffee shops, instead generally coming with a complete kitchen offering a restaurant menu with meals for any time of the day.

Among the drinks customarily served are the grand crème (large cup of white coffee), wine by the glass, beer (un demi, half a pint, or une pression, a glass of draught beer), un pastis (made with aniseed flavour spirit, usually named by a brand like Ricard, 51, Pernod), and un espresso, or un express (a small cup of black coffee).

[2] In many cases, the café sometimes doubles as a bureau de tabac, a tobacco shop that sells a wide variety of merchandise, including metro tickets and prepaid phone cards.

During the Revolution, the cafés turned into centers of furious political discussion and activity, often led by members of the Revolutionary clubs.

During the Restoration period, the café was an important social institution, not as a place to eat but as an establishment to meet friends, drink coffee, read the newspapers, play checkers, and discuss politics.

Most Cafés furnish what is called a déjeuner froid à la fourchette ... Parisians ... frequently take these meat breakfasts.

The cafés of Paris are no longer part of her intellectual life, but they are certainly the chief feature of her streets; on pavements hardly wide enough for a honeymoon couple to walk on, a flimsy chair and an oak-grained tin table will defend against all-comers the right of every good Frenchman to enjoy upon the very streets of the loved city his Byrrh--and Frankincense."