Paris Insights - The Blog

Artesano is a specialty coffee roaster located on rue Saint-Paul just off of quai des Célestins in the 4th arrondissement. I went there recently to taste espresso and to purchase a supply of roasted coffee beans.

Coffee is served on the sidewalk terrace outfitted with patio furniture. I found a spot to sit and wait for my espresso to be prepared. When it was served, I sipped it slowly, trying to determine its flavor characteristics.

I found the brew to be strong and a bit harsh without much sweetness. The only note that I could detect was tomato, but perhaps I was influenced by the last time I had tasted an espresso.

The proprietor, Arturo Valentino, told me that he roasts his beans weekly at a coffee roasting facility in the 13th arrondissement. He sells only Mexican coffee.

I purchased a 250g bag of the beans used to brew the espresso that I was served on the terrace. Then I asked Arturo to indicate the tasting notes on the bag. He wrote the following: kiwi, grape, and dried fruits.

I did not experience any of these aromas when I tasted the espresso at the shop. When I took the beans home and brewed them myself, I continued to taste only faintly-sweet notes of tomato.

I did some research on the Internet and found that the Irlanda Estate produces beans of the Red Bourbon and Typica variety. There was no indication on the package as to which variety it contained.

As well as being a coffee roaster, Arturo is also a photographer and journalist. There is a display rack of his large photographic prints in the center of the shop, and his images adorn the walls of the shop.

Arturo publishes a newspaper called Artesano Journal. The copy that I was given (Number 23 – February 2025) is in English and contains interesting articles on three creative people, two of whom have made Paris their home. The issue features an architect from Venezuela; a photographer based in Lisbon; and a barista from The Netherlands. The barista recently won the Latte Art France Championship held in Lyon in January. Her award-winning performance at that championship can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfN3tqa6MWs.

Artisano Specialty Coffee Roaster
3, rue Saint-Paul
75004 Paris

I stopped at Café d’Auteur about a week ago to see what kind of espresso they were preparing.

They were brewing two types of coffee beans: one called Kenya Gichathaini and the other called Costa Rica El Salitre.

I ordered a cup of espresso prepared with the Kenya Gichathaini grain.

Served with a packet of Gavottes, the espresso exhibited a fine crema. Its flavor was full-bodied and I thought that I detected a note of tomato.

I purchased a 200g bag of the Kenyan coffee beans and took it home to prepare an espresso with my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine.

However, when I passed the beans through my Delonghi grinder, it stopped abruptly. This was due to the characteristics of the beans: they were small (1cm X 0.8 cm) and brittle. I had to remove them from the grinder and restart the process. This time, I fed a few beans through at a time, rather than dumping the normal batch of 18 grams into the hopper at once. The grinder sounded as though it was grinding little pebbles, but I succeeded in achieving a fine grind appropriate for making an espresso.

After I finally figured out how to grind the beans without clogging the grinder, I succeeded in producing an espresso that tasted much like the coffee that I had tasted at Café d’Auteur. However, the espressos that I prepared never exhibited the fine crema that I had experienced at the café.

I was left thinking that perhaps the roast had surpassed the date by which its quality was optimal for producing a crema. (There was no production date indicated on the bag.)

Café d’Auteur is a pleasant place in which to enjoy an espresso. The waitstaff is friendly and comfortable warm brown tones dominate the décor. Edison lights hang from the ceiling and framed drawings of wildlife hang on the walls. Jazzy singing and mellow saxophone played over the sound system while I sipped my coffee.

Café d’Auteur
39 Rue Mazarine
75006 Paris

I recently entered Crible Café near the Jardin des Plantes to purchase a bag of roasted coffee beans and to drink an espresso.

Samah was at the counter preparing beverages. She produced an espresso made from Natural Red Bourbon beans from the El Sunzita farm in El Salvador.

I sat at the bench next to the window and sipped the coffee, trying to determine what flavors I could detect. Samah said that one of the notes was apple. I thought that I could detect that.

The label on the hopper of the coffee grinder indicates that Gala apple, fresh hazelnut, and red grape notes are predominant. Later, while doing some research on the Internet, I learned that prune is also noted as a flavor.

The café is tiny, but its small size did not discourage customers from stopping by for coffee. Cappuccino seemed to be the preferred beverage.

I purchased a 250g bag of Natural Red Bourbon roasted beans, took it home, and prepared an espresso with my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine. The quality of the espresso that I produced was much like the espresso that I tasted at Crible. I later determined that the most predominant note was prune.

Samah told me that the beans are roasted at a coffee roasting facility located near place de la Bastille.

Crible
75, rue Buffon
75005 Paris

I recently went to a small café called Ten Belles, located in the 6th arrondissement, to purchase some roasted coffee beans.

I asked the barista which espressos they were preparing that day. She mentioned two single-origin and one blended coffee. When she said that the blend, called Le Mixtape, had notes of chocolate, I decided to order that.

Le Mixtape was a combination of beans from Brazil and Colombia, specifically, Rio Brilhante and Huitaca. The coffee is roasted at the company’s coffee roasting facility in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.

As it was lunchtime, I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, called Veggie Toastie.

I ate the sandwich first. It consisted of grated Comté cheese prepared with parsley and sliced and cooked button mushrooms between two slices of grilled wheat bread. It was wonderfully flavorful and it satisfied my noontime hunger.

I then took a sip of water and tasted the espresso. It did indeed have chocolate flavor, just as the barista had proclaimed.

I purchased a 250g bag of the Mixtape blend, took it home, ground a portion, and then prepared an espresso that tasted much like the one that I had experienced at Ten Belles. I also noted that the brew was unctuous with rich, full-bodied flavor. The brewing process produced a robust crema.

The interior of Ten Belles is small, with seating available at four small tables. (There is additional sidewalk seating.) I was able to get an inside table at the window, with a view of the interior of the shop. I felt lucky to get a table at all, because there was a constant flow of customers coming in to place orders. I believe that most of them were there to order takeout, so the tables did not fill up quickly.

The personnel behind the counter were helpful and answered all of my questions. They did not serve customers at the tables. Rather, they called the customers to pick up the order at the counter once it was ready. I was called to the counter twice: once for the espresso and a second time for the grilled sandwich.

Ten Belles
53, rue du Cherche Midi
75006 Paris

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

As I am on the mailing list of ExploreParis, a collaborative project of diverse organizations involved in the tourist industry in the greater Parisian area, I recently received a notice that a small coffee roasting facility in the nearby town of Montreuil was holding an open house to demonstrate coffee roasting followed by a tasting. I purchased a ticket online and made my way to Capuch’ on a recent Saturday morning.

Getting there was not difficult because Paris and the surrounding region have a wonderfully integrated mass transit system.

Capuch’ proprietor Julie Caron gave a tour of her facility to a small group of coffee enthusiasts, of which I was one. She is pictured here holding a Chemex coffee beaker, which she used to make coffee after she demonstrated the roasting process.

Julie was enthusiastic about her gas-fired, Turkish-model coffee roasting machine. Not pictured is the complex system of extracting and filtering the fumes produced by the roasting process before they are evacuated out of the shop. In the neighborhood in which I live in Paris I have sometimes noticed the wonderful aroma of freshly-roasted coffee wafting out of one of the local coffee-roasting facilities as I walk to the metro. I never realized, until I saw Julie’s demonstration, how much care had to be taken to keep the chaff of the roasted beans from floating onto the street.

Julie had purchased a 69kg bag of unroasted coffee beans from Guatemala.

She then removed a small batch of the beans from the bag, weighed it, and sifted through the beans to remove debris and small pebbles.

Prior to examining them, she turned on the roaster to heat it up.

Once the roaster was hot, and after carefully scrutinizing the small batch of beans, she poured 3.5 kg of them into the hopper of the coffee roaster. (The capacity of the roaster is 5kg.)

The drum of the roaster turns in the gas-fired chamber, roasting the beans slowly.

Julie explained that the roasting process is monitored three ways: visually, aurally, and olfactorily. In the photo above, she is is listening for the “crack” (like popcorn) of the coffee beans, which is a sign of their doneness. She is also pulling out the sampling spoon, which is used to check the scent of the roast. To the right of the spoon, you can see a small round observation window that permits the operator to view the progressive darkening of the beans during the roasting process.

Julie gave each participant a chance to experience the maturing aroma of the beans during the roasting process.

Finally, the roasting process was finished and Julie opened the drum to transfer the beans to the cooling tray. Once cooled, she would transfer them to a canister where they would remain for 24 hours while they released CO₂.

After the coffee-roasting demonstration, Julie took a small batch of beans that she had roasted the day before and ground them to prepare them for the pour-over coffee-making demonstration.

She demonstrated the pour-over technique of preparing coffee using a Chemex beaker.

This technique produced four cups of coffee, one for each of the participants.

I purchased a 250g bag of Guatemala Huehuetenango “Le Rêveur” from the batch that Julie had roasted the day before my visit. The tasting notes on the bag indicated that I would experience aromas of chocolate and cooked fruit.

Back home, I ground 18g of the beans finely and used my 9Barista stove-top espresso machine to produce a robust coffee that did, indeed, express aromas of chocolate and cherry. Because it was prepared as espresso, it was stronger than what I experienced at the roasting facility.

Capuch’
8, rue Eugène Varlin
93100 Montreuil

Last week I had the occasion to purchase 250 grams of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Banko Chelchele roasted coffee beans from the Hexagone Café.

Located in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, the café is a handsome establishment that specializes in selling single-origin coffee beans as well as beverages (espresso and filtered coffee) made from those beans.

The beans are roasted in Brittany.

Back home, I finely ground 18 grams of the coffee beans and made an espresso with my stove-top 9Barista espresso machine.

The process produced about 40 grams of espresso coffee. There were no tasting notes printed on the bag, so I did not have much to guide me in my search for flavor except my own palette. I thought that the coffee did not express much sweetness, but, on the other hand, it was not overly bitter.

In other words, I could drink it without sugar.

Searching on the Internet, I found other people’s tasting descriptions of the Yirgacheffe bean and, after brewing several cups, I thought that I could detect the following: unsweetened chocolate, blackcurrant berry, and lime.

These flavors are ephemeral in that they are not always there cup after cup.

I was pleased that the brewing processes consistently produces a crema on the surface of the coffee. I believe this is related to the freshness of the roasted bean. The batch I purchased was roasted on the 10th of February.

Hexagone Café
121, rue du Château
75014 Paris