Forget the Louvre: Here is the one thing you must do in Paris

What you need to know about Paris is this. You don’t need to see Monet’s waterlilies or Napoleon’s tomb. You can, and you probably will. But if you really want to know what Paris is about, you’re better off sitting in a cafe, soaking up conversational murmur and the clink of cups on saucers.

Cafe terraces are like opera boxes: the place from which to watch the passing drama of Paris. You can live out a fantasy, and imagine yourself a bohemian, existentialist thinker, 1960s student, or one of those French movie stars ageing disgracefully.

Les Deux Magots was once the hangout of poets such as Verlaine and Rimbaud and the philosopher Sartre, but these days you’re more likely to find politicians and tourists.Credit: iStock

You can just be yourself, too, but don’t we travel to escape ourselves and get a taste of other people’s lives? Parisian cafes are nothing like Australian ones or, for that matter, Italian or Argentine ones. You’ll learn more about Paris culture from a cafe terrace than from a museum.

There are so many cafes in Paris that listing them would fill volumes longer than Proust. But while the capital has long had good cafes, good coffee is a newer phenomenon. Only in the last 15 years have quality coffee houses offered superior coffees and contemporary coffee styles.

One of the first was KB Cafe Shop whose owner Nick Piegay returned from Australia inspired to improve the Parisian coffee scene. Another cafe, Holybelly, is run by French couple Nicolas Alary and Sarah Mouchot, who spent five years in Australia.

Among other foreigners, Australians themselves have influenced the Paris coffee scene, including Tom Clark at Coutume, which has become a cafe franchise and speciality-coffee distributor, Di and Will Keser at Hardware Société, and Matthew Sloane at the surf-inspired O Coffee.

The latter serves up flat whites and toast with Vegemite or avocado in a chic interior of marble and blonde wood, and has an amiable antipodean atmosphere.

You can no longer stereotype Paris cafes, where anything now goes. Try excellent Cafe Mericourt in the 11th arrondissement, with its green walls, green cactus and green eggs with feta. The drinks menu would horrify Parisian traditionalists with its chai lattes, flat whites and jasmine tea.

In the 3rd arrondissement, Partisan Cafe Artisanal is so uber-trendy that half their Instagram photos are posted in black-and-white. The decor is industrial, the counter seven metres long, and banana bread rules. Baristas with beards serve Peruvian, Kenyan or Colombian blends to folk flipping through magazines, since laptops are banned.

The loveliest specialty coffee venue might be The Dancing Goat near Pere Lachaise cemetery. It has the traditionally shaped wooden chairs and little square tables of Paris cafes, but you sit in a glow of light that streams through plate windows and bounces off mirrors.

Sweet treats.Credit: iStock

Traditional cafes haven’t been supplanted, however. Plenty of cafes still have rattan chairs, tiny marble-topped tables, chequered floors and brass railings. In the 5th arrondissement you’ll find a congregation of cafes where you’ll escape tourists and trends, and find students and local residents reading dog-eared paperbacks.

Montmartre is also crammed with cafes. The most Parisian of Paris cafes might be Le Consulat, although every Instagrammer knows it, so you’d best be early before the crush of bright young things arrives. Once the haunt of Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, Le Consulat has a tiny terrace on which red tables and chairs sit skew-whiff on cobblestones.

Better-known and more upmarket cafes are often a formal and organised experience, but in ordinary cafes informality reigns. Find yourself a seat. The waiter may ask what you want without offering a menu, since traditional cafes serve the same few styles of coffee and snacks.

Your bill arrives with your order, but you aren’t expected to pay until you leave. As a general rule, you’ll pay more if you’ve installed yourself at a terrace table, less at a table inside, and the least if you stand at an inside counter. The countertop may have a selection of help-yourself snacks for which you’ll be charged later.

Cafe de Flore was a hangout of the intelligentsia. Picasso edited an art magazine from the back room, Trotsky and Hemmingway were regulars.Credit: iStock

If you want to fit in, then in the early morning you should order cafe au lait, sometimes served in a bowl for ease of dunking croissants. Later the most popular traditional coffees are the simply-called cafe (espresso) and noisette or “nut” named for its colour, better known to Aussies as a macchiato.

Traditional cafe menus feature staples such as croissants, brioches and croque-monsieurs. Lunch menus are limited, with the likes of baguette sandwiches, omelettes, onion tarts and salads being staples.

More elaborate à la carte food strays from the spirit of a cafe into the realms of the bistro or brasserie. The new wave of cafes will however have all manner of coffees and teas and more eclectic menus – yes, even smashed avocado. Best head to a patisserie if you’re after posh pastries.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse are particularly dense with traditional cafes, especially along the boulevards of the same names. Twentieth-century writers and artists must have cafe-hopped a lot around here, since many lay claim to the likes of Picasso, Kandinsky and Hemingway.

In Montparnasse, the owner of Cafe de la Rotonde was once paid in paintings by impecunious artists, which must have turned out to be a good deal. Le Dôme Cafe and Le Select nearby also retain their early-20th-century decor, even if their soul has now been stolen by the social-media crowd.

In Saint-Germain-des-Prés, two iconic establishments sit almost side by side. Les Deux Magots was once the hangout of poets such as Verlaine and Rimbaud and the philosopher Sartre, but these days you’re more likely to find politicians and tourists.

The ice cream and hot chocolates are excellent, but waiters frown upon lingering, and might attempt to pressure you into ordering something more, which is against all the civilised rules of French cafes.

Cafe de Flore across the road was another hangout of the intelligentsia. Picasso edited an art magazine from the back room, Trotsky and Hemmingway were regulars. Today the regulars lean more towards the arts and fashion. Wear an ironic beret or bring along your poodle and you’ll fit right in.

Actually, Cafe de Flore is less pretentious than Les Deux Magots and its terrace has a better outlook. Both are firmly on the tourist trail. You’ll want to spend your lunch money elsewhere, but it’s hard to resist a glass of white wine on the terrace of either establishment – if you can claim a table.

There are some famous cafés you should probably skip. Coffee at Fouquet’s costs a ludicrous €12 ($20), though you do get to sit under its classic red awning right on the Champs-Elysees amid movie starlets and mysterious men wearing dark sunglasses.

Technically Fouquet’s is a brasserie, and admittedly does have a lovely interior of polished wood, brass and black-and-white photos of movie-star patrons – although the sorts of movie stars young people have never heard of, like Marlene Dietrich and Jeanne Moreau.

If you’re going to choose a cafe in an ultra-touristy location make it glamorous Cafe Marly, looking out onto the glass pyramid of the Louvre courtyard. Waiters in their bowties look as if they might moonlight as models, and the walls are burgundy trimmed with gold, which just about compensates for being charged €16 for a creme brulee.

Another cafe beneath the arches – this time of Place des Vosges – is Carette, although it calls itself a tearoom. It’s old-school and upmarket, with coffees served off silver trays and pastries piled with cumulus clouds of cream. The macarons are so light you have to weigh them down to stop them floating ceiling-wards.

But perhaps the ultimate in upmarket elegance is ornate Cafe de la Paix across from the opera house, opened in 1862, seemingly without care for budget. You can perch like a brigadier-general on a posh banquette inside, beneath oil paintings and gilded ceilings.

But cafe terraces are always best. Take up a spot on the terrace and gaze out past a few choice Parisian lamp posts at the frothy facade of the opera house, and watch the world go by. Paris to a T. Or a coffee.

THE DETAILS

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parisjetaime.com

Fly
Emirates flies from Sydney and Melbourne via Dubai to Paris. See emirates.com

Stay
The impeccably stylish Saint James Paris, a member of luxe brand Relais & Châteaux, sits in a tranquil location close to the Arc de Triomphe. Rooms from €710 a night. See saint-james-paris.com

The writer travelled at his own expense.