le coffee report parisien

when coffee comes to paris it comes not single spies but in battalions.

last time i was here, more than five years ago, good coffee could not be found and no one knew what a micro-roaster was. today, it is a new coffee landscape. last week's was a short work visit focusing on the unusual innovation landscape of parisian fine dining (closest city sibling: tokyo), permitting only a limited coffee reconnoitre guided by emperor norton and their unnervingly pubescent dog, fergus. so: two coffee shops that serve good—in fact, excellent—coffee in carefully considered spaces.

in the 1st, télescope has many of the mechanical trappings of the very serious coffeeshop, including the fancy new mahlkönig ek43 grinder (which no one seems to really have figured out yet) and a marco über boiler. they make a finely balanced café creme (= capp; espresso from has bean in london) and their small but light, high-ceilinged space is a good place in which to drink it.

in the 3rd, the broken arm is a select shop with the predictable selection (limited edition nike frees, raf simons, expensive and laboriously designed periodicals). it is attached to a plywood-paneled coffee shop that could be in stockholm and, in fact, the coffee is from solberg & hansen in oslo.

the beans come from Far, Far Away because paris roasting infrastructure is still emerging. i was to visit two roaster-cafés the day i left town—belleville and lomi—but was unavoidably delayed by the extensive calvados collection at caves augé, including a green calvados on which the internet is mute. stay tuned for next time.