Paris Insights - The Blog

Malongo is situated about a five-minute walk from place Saint-Michel near the Seine River. It is a coffee house that has a large sales room where a coffee beans are roasted and sold; a counter where coffee is brewed and sold; and two rooms where customers sit to enjoy their beverages.

I entered to taste and purchase their coffee of the month and learned that it was Cajamarca from Peru.

Before purchasing the roasted beans, I went to the coffee counter (located in another room) and ordered an espresso made from the same bean.

I also ordered a caramel tart to accompany the espresso. (The barista graciously provided an extra fork so that I could share the tart with my partner.)

After tasting the tart and espresso, I returned to the sales room to purchase a 250g bag of the roasted bean.

There, I learned that a selection of green coffee beans could be roasted on the spot in a retro-futuristic-looking coffee roaster (minimum purchase 500g).

I admired the coffee roaster, but decided to proceed with the purchase of the Peruvian beans, since they had already been roasted, vacuum packed, and packaged in a handsome box.

Back home, I used my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine to make a 40g shot of espresso. The machine produced an espresso with a reddish-golden froth and an intense flavor similar to the one that I had tasted at the coffee shop.

After making several cups over a period of several days, I finally concluded that I could detect the subtle note of grapefruit that was indicated in the tasting notes on the box.

Malongo
50, Rue Saint-André des Arts
75006 Paris

Located on the Right Bank across the Seine River from Ile Saint-Louis, La Caféothèque is one of the few coffee shops in Paris that is decorated to provide the relaxing ambiance I believe an espresso café should offer.

Founded in 2005, long before the trend in austere decor and uncomfortable benches, La Caféothèque offers funky decor, green plants, exposed wooden beams, and artwork on the walls.

I counted five rooms in this establishment: one where the sales are transacted and the coffee roasting takes place; one where the beverages are prepared; two where coffee is consumed; and one (in the back) where courses in coffee tasting, coffee roasting, and barista training are given.

Upon entering the café, I ordered an espresso made from beans called Las Camelias, produced in the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala. I also purchased a 250g bag of the roasted beans.

I took my receipt to the room where the beverages are prepared, received the espresso, and then sat down to enjoy the coffee in a comfortable space equipped with rustic, colorful wooden tables and chairs and decorated with lots of greenery.

Back home, I brewed a 40g espresso with my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine. The coffee tasted much like the espresso that I purchased at La Caféothèque: sweet with a hint of orange. Nice!

La Caféothèque
52, rue de l’Hôtel de Ville
75004 Paris

I recently attended a presentation of an exhibit entitled The Resurgence of Erased Black Cemeteries given by curator Pauline Peretz at the Humathèque library of the Condorcet Campus in Aubervilliers, a town located just outside of Paris.

Located in the great entrance hall of the library, the exhibit consists of a series of photographs posted to large panels with descriptive text (in French).

During her 90-minute presentation, Madame Peretz walked to each panel and talked about eleven cemeteries in the United States that had been forcibly abandoned, forgotten or “erased” due to construction projects, then rediscovered.

In the photograph above, she is talking about the Zion Cemetery in Tampa, Florida. This cemetery, founded in 1901, was abandoned in the 1920s when the owner, an African-American businessman, could not pay taxes that the city illegally imposed upon him. During the 1950s, the city built an apartment complex on the land. In 2019, while consulting city directories, a Tampa Bay Times journalist realized that the complex had been built over the burial ground.

Today, there is an ongoing effort by the Zion Cemetery Preservation and Maintenance Society and the Tampa Housing Authority to restore the cemetery to its rightful dignity.

The exhibit presents information about multiple cemeteries in Florida and Virginia, as well as a cemetery in Houston, Texas and the African Burial Ground in Manhattan. It will continue through May 3, 2025.

The Humathèque library can be accessed from Paris via the number 12 line of the city metro system. The library is a five-minute walk from the Front Populaire metro station.

I ventured into Noir Café on the corner of rue Monge and rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the 5th arrondissement to purchase roasted coffee beans.

The café is spacious with warm brown tones. In the center of the café, seating is provided by stools around low polished blocks that look as though they have been hewn from marble. Seating was also provided at the windows by blocks of this material. I did not find this austere ambiance very comforting, but I proceeded to the counter to order an espresso.

The barista was helpful and answered my questions about the coffee. She told me that the coffee beans are roasted at their facility in the town of Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine.

I ordered a cup of Hambela, an Ethiopian coffee from the Yirgacheffe region of that country, and took it to a window seat, where I tasted it. (The seating on the block of “marble” was not comfortable. I learned later that the material is called cultured marble and that it is a man-made product that contains dyes, marble dust and resin.) While I sipped the coffee, rap music played softly over the sound system.

After tasting the espresso, I purchased a 200g container of the roasted bean, took it home, and prepared an espresso with my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine.

I found the taste to be intense and much like the espresso I had experienced at the café. Because of the intensity, it was difficult to discern notes, or flavors, in the coffee. About all I could say was that it tasted “floral.”

I decided to try brewing the coffee using Melitta paper filter in a coffee cone. This technique produced a milder coffee and allowed the flavors of the coffee to open. The flavors indicated on the label of the container are the following: apricot, floral jasmine, and toffee. I thought that I detected notes of floral jasmine in the coffee. It was an agreeable flavor for me.

Noir
29 bis, rue Monge
75005 Paris