le mystere du cafe

Today, in an art-nouveau style cafe in the old town of Tallinn, a woman of not inconsiderable years made me a hot and strong cappuccino...just the way I like it. Last week, in a small coastal village in Sweden, a young girl made me a hot and strong cafe latte. Neither had probably ever trained at a barista academy.
In France, I watched a woman in a cafe ruthlessly murder a jug of mik by boiling it, cooling it in the refrigerator, returning 10 minutes late to boil it again, cool it again...and so on. I'm not sure what the purpose of this process was, but to me it illustrated the absolute horror of French coffee making.
Pourquoi?
When it comes to food, the French are meticulous in everything they do. Their pastries and bread are devine, their sauces silky, their markets full of wondrous fruits and vegetables, the cheeses sublime...and yet....the coffee is, by and large, horrible. Is it because to the French, milk is for making lovely cheese? Is it because they tend to favour robusta beans? Or a combination of both.
We searched blogs for suggestions of good coffee shops in Paris. We tried them. We will keep searching.

Chambre d'hote

No matter how much you savour every moment and refuse to take anything for granted, there are some things about travel that are... a touch tiresome.
A noisy hotel room that you pay $150 for, and can’t swing a husband in.
Translating “noix, basse and cote” on a restaurant menu as “fish coated in nuts” and ending up with a large steak with zucchini.
The answer is “Chambre d’hote”.
You get a gorgeous room filled with family antiques, often on a 17th century farm for $90 a night. You then pre-book a dinner, “Table d’hote” and enjoy whatever the host feels like cooking that night. It’s 3 or 4 courses, including wine for a paltry $22. You’ll perhaps share the table with 6 septugenarians who can’t speak English and 2 young Parisiennes who can. Laughter ensues as you try to understand a jolly old man’s joke about Napoleon. You offer each other seconds from the copper pot of vegetable soup and pour another glass of wine, knowing the carafe will be refilled as soon as it’s empty.
After three hours of stuffing yourself like a french farmer, you stumble back to your room of thick stone walls and sleep like… well, like a pickled french farmer!
You wake to a breakfast of croissants, fresh bread and homemade jams made from the fruit of the trees in the garden. Before leaving, you use the free wi-fi to book the next Chambre d’hote.

Boulangerie Beatrix, Paris

After a quick stop-over in Kuala Lumpur, home of the super-highway and mega-mall, we landed in Paris, surprised and delighted by the mild spring weather. We decided to combine our love of walking with following up some internet recommendations for good coffee shops. The first was not too far from Notre Dame and sold lots of varieties from all over the world. While the barista/owner was very helpful and could make pretty designs on top of the foam (not something that usually inspires us), I noticed he had a habit of licking the spoon that he’d used to make the designs and then re-using it on the next cup. Nice. I figured we’d survived two flights with various edible food-like substances, so I kept it to myself, and we ordered a Machiato each. It was ok, but the French heat-treated milk will always taste odd to us. A French woman once explained to us that “Milk is for babies (bebes)” and therefore only good for making cheese, yoghurt and other yummy things.
We did a longish circuit around Notre Dame, and then stopped for lunch at our favourite Boulangerie, Beatrix, around the corner from the Pompidou Centre. Last time we came to Paris, we caught the Metro into town, and then wondered what to do with our luggage. More seasoned travellers would have taken them to their hotel, or found a locker or something more sensible, but we decided to ask the bakery owner what she thought we should do with two small suitcases. In contrast to what we’d heard about the French, she offered to mind them for us. We thanked her by eating a large morning tea. And then came back for lunch every day. The afternoon coffee shop was fine but while the french do baguettes and tarts very well, the coffee is a bit disappointing.