A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café, is an establishment that serves various types of coffee drinks like espresso, latte, americano and cappuccino, as well as other beverages. An espresso bar specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks. Some coffeehouses may serve iced coffee among other cold drinks, as well as non-caffeinated drinks. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, cakes, breads, pastries or doughnuts. Many doughnut shops in Canada and the U.S. serve coffee to accompany doughnuts, so these can also be classified as coffee shops, although doughnut shops tend to be more casual and serve cheaper fare (suiting take-out and drive-through, popular in those countries). In continental Europe, some cafés even serve alcoholic drinks, and in West Asia, coffeehouses may offer a flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah, called shisha in most varieties of Arabic or nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek, and Turkish.
While café may mean a coffeehouse, it tends to have a different meaning in Britain: a diner or "greasy spoon"; it is also used for a teahouse or other casual eating and drinking place. A coffeehouse may resemble a bar or restaurant, but differs from a cafeteria (a canteen, a restaurant without table service). Coffeehouse operation ranges from management of an independent venue by its owner to franchises of a large multinational corporation.
From a cultural standpoint, a coffeehouse largely serves as a center of social interaction: it provides patrons with a place to meet, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. A coffeehouse can serve as an informal social club for its regular members. From as early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer–songwriter performances, typically in the evening. The digital age saw the rise of the Internet café along similar principles.
Etymology
The Arabic word qahwa () is the origin of the Italian caffè (first attested as caveé in Venice in 1570), from which the English coffee and French café both derive. The Arabic term originally meant a type of wine, but after the wine ban by Islam, the name was transferred to coffee, thought to have a similar rousing effect. European knowledge of coffee (the plant, its seeds, and the drink made from the seeds) came through European contact with Turkey, likely via Venetian–Ottoman trade relations.
Café () is the French word for both coffee and coffeehouse; it was adopted (as ) by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989), entry number 50031127 (café). The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989), entry number 00333259 (caffè, n) In Southern England, especially around London in the 1950s, the French pronunciation was often facetiously altered to and spelt caff.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989), entry number 50031130 (caff)
The English word café to describe a place that serves coffee and snacks (rather than the drink itself) is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660. Meanwhile, the first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Ottoman Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffeehouse).
The translingual word root /kafe/ appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Portuguese and French (café); German (Kaffeehaus or Café); Swedish (kafé or fik); Finnish (kahvila); Spanish (cafetería); Italian (caffè or caffetteria); Polish (kawa); Serbian (кафа / kafa); Ukrainian (кава (kava)); Turkish (kahvehane).
Early history
Early forms of the beverage now known as coffee were consumed in Yemen, where Sufi orders used qahwa to maintain wakefulness during nighttime dhikr recitations. This early coffee-based beverage was named after the port city of Mokha, from which coffee beans were first exported to the other parts of the Arab world. Yemen was once one of the world's major producers and exporters, with "Mocha" coffee. Yemeni traders played a crucial role in spreading both the beverage and its associated rituals, contributing to its growing popularity across the Islamic world.
In the 15th century, coffee cultivation and consumption began in Yemen, where merchants transformed it into a lucrative and commercial product. The beans, often sourced from the Ethiopian highlands, were roasted, ground, and brewed in a method that closely resembles modern coffee preparation. By the early 16th century, coffee spread northward to Mecca, Cairo, and Damascus, where coffeehouses — known as maqāhī (مقاهي) became popular meeting places.Albanese, Marilia. (2017). “Cafés and Public Life in the Middle East.” Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. Macmillan.
Ottoman Empire
The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These coffeehouses also made their way to Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul, when two Arab merchants, Hakem of Aleppo and Shems of Damascus, opened the first coffeehouse in the Tahtakale district in the 16th century and to Baghdad.
Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.
Coffeehouses in Mecca became a concern of imams, who viewed them as places for political gatherings and drinking, leading to bans between 1512 and 1524. However, these bans could not be maintained, as coffee became ingrained in daily ritual and culture among Arabs and neighboring peoples. The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports in his writings (1642–49) about the opening of the first coffeehouse (kiva han) in Constantinople:
Iran The 17th-century French traveler and writer Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse (qahveh khaneh in Persian):
Mughal Empire Consumption of Turkish coffee is attested to in the Mughal court, and appears in Mughal art from the 16th century, as is the existence of qahwakhanas (coffeehouses) in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi).
Modern history Europe
In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established, soon becoming increasingly popular. The first public coffeehouse in Europe proper was opened in Belgrade, year 1521 and shortly after the city fell to the Ottomans. It was followed by coffeehouse in Sarajevo, at then lively part of the town called Bentbaša, around year 1532. Bentbaša was on the route of caravans and was thus a popular meeting point. Outside Ottoman Empire in Europe, first coffeehouse is said to have appeared in 1632 in Livorno, Italy, founded by a Jewish merchant, or in 1640, in Venice. Citing In the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, coffeehouses were very often meeting places for writers and artists.
Austria
The traditional tale of the origins of the Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king, Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki (also known as Georg Kolschitzky), a Ukrainian Cossack and Polish diplomat of Ruthenian descent. Kulczycki, according to the tale, then began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard, also being the first to serve coffee with milk.
However, it is now widely accepted that the first Viennese coffeehouse was actually opened by an Armenian merchant named Johannes Diodato (also known as Johannes Theodat) in 1685. Fifteen years later, four other Armenians owned coffeehouses. The culture of drinking coffee was itself widespread in the country in the second half of the 18th century.
Over time, a Viennese coffeehouse culture developed. Writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, bon vivants and their financiers met, and new coffee varieties were served. People played cards or chess, worked, read, thought, composed, discussed, argued, observed and just chatted. Much information was also obtained, because local and foreign newspapers were freely available to all customers. This form of coffeehouse culture spread throughout the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century. (Also .)
Scientific theories, political plans and artistic projects were worked out and discussed in Viennese coffeehouses all over Central Europe. James Joyce enjoyed his coffee in a Viennese coffeehouse on the Adriatic Sea in Trieste, then and now the main port for coffee and coffee processing in Italy and Central Europe. From there, the Viennese Kapuziner coffee developed into today's cappuccino. This special multicultural atmosphere of the Habsburg coffeehouses was largely destroyed by the later Nazism and communism and today can only be found in a few places that have long been in the slipstream of history, such as Vienna or Trieste.
England
The first coffeehouse in England was opened on the High Street (on the site of the later Grand Café) in Oxford in 1650 or 1651 by "Jacob the Jew". A second, competing coffeehouse was opened across the street (on the site of the later Queen's Lane Coffee House) in 1654, by "Cirques Jobson, the Jew". In London, the earliest coffeehouse was established by Pasqua Rosée (described as Greek, Armenian, or Turkish) in 1652. Anthony Wood observed of the coffeehouses of Oxford in 1674 "The decay of study, and consequently of learning, are coffy houses, to which most scholars retire and spend much of the day in hearing and speaking of news, in speaking vilely of their superiors." Pasqua Rosée was the servant of a trader in goods from the Ottoman Empire named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment there.
From 1670 to 1685, London coffeehouses began to increase in number, and also in political importance due to their popularity as places of debate. For the first several years, London's coffeehouses were the preserve of "a well-educated and commercial elite", but from the 1660s their popularity increased. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England; and in London alone there were perhaps 550 at their 18th-century peak. Citing Many men found a coffeehouse a convenient place for doing business, holding consultations there and having mail for them sent there, as well as keeping up with news. The coffeehouses were great social levelers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. Entry gave access to books or print news. The rich intellectual atmosphere of early London coffeehouses was available to anyone who could pay the sometimes one penny entry fee, giving them the name "penny universities".
Though Charles II tried to suppress coffeehouses as places where the "Idle and disaffected persons" met, and where "divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majesties Government", the public still flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the wits gathered around John Dryden at Will's Coffee House, in Bow Street (although Jonathan Swift was unimpressed). As coffeehouses were believed to be areas where anti-government gossip could easily spread, Queen Mary II and the London City magistrates tried to prosecute people who frequented coffeehouses as they were liable to "spread false and seditious reports". William III's privy council also suppressed Jacobite sympathizers in the 1680s and 1690s in coffeehouses as places that they believed harbored plotters against the regime. (Also and .)