History and culture
French café culture
Beyond the 17th-century arrival of coffeehouses already covered in CoffeeHQ's European coffeehouse history, French café culture developed its own lasting social conventions around the café as a place to linger, read and socialise.
Each section below is labelled by how well-established its claims are — look for the label under each heading.
The café as a place to linger, not just to drink coffee quickly
Documented history · France
French café culture is documented as historically distinct from the faster, stand-at-the-bar Italian espresso convention (see CoffeeHQ's Italian espresso-bar culture article) — sitting at a table for an extended period, often over one drink, reading or socialising, has long been an accepted and expected use of café space rather than something cafés discourage.
Café crème and café noisette
Documented history · France
"Café crème" (espresso with steamed milk, closer to a small milky coffee than a large filter drink) and "café noisette" (espresso with a small dash of milk, similar in concept to a macchiato) are documented, commonly used French café terms — see CoffeeHQ's terminology register for how these relate to, without being identical to, other countries' equivalent drinks.
Literary and intellectual café culture
Documented history · France
Certain Paris cafés became documented, lasting gathering places for writers, artists and intellectuals from the 19th century onward — a real historical pattern (echoing the earlier Ottoman and English coffeehouse traditions CoffeeHQ's other history articles cover), though the specific cultural mythology around individual, named cafés varies in how well-documented versus embellished it is by venue.
How coffee and the café reached France
Documented history · 1644–1689 · Marseilles, Paris
The dates usually given run as follows. Coffee was brought to Marseilles in 1644 by a merchant returning from Constantinople, who brought the vessels for making it as well. It was drunk privately in Paris from 1657. It became fashionable in 1669, when the Ottoman ambassador, Soliman Aga, served it to guests during his embassy. The first coffeehouse in France opened in Marseilles in 1671, near the Exchange. In Paris, an Armenian named Pascal sold coffee at the fair of Saint-Germain in 1672 and opened a house afterwards. The Café de Procope, opened in 1689 by a Sicilian, François Procope, is the one a 1922 history calls 'the first real French café'; the distinction it draws is between a shop that sold coffee and an establishment people went to for its own sake. French physicians had tried and failed to discredit the drink on dietary grounds in 1679.
Sources: All About Coffee
Café au lait began as a prescription
Documented history · 1685–1711 · France
Coffee with milk is recorded in France first as medicine: a physician of Grenoble recommended café au lait in 1685. A chronology of coffee also notes a French novelty of 1711, infusing the ground coffee in a cloth bag, an early step away from boiling the grounds and towards the filtered coffee later associated with French apparatus.
Sources: All About Coffee