There's only one thing I want from a Parisian café

On a tiny sidewalk terrace on the north side of Montmartre, a young French woman, no older than 25, sat at the table beside me and ordered from another woman, no younger than 50, “Bonjour, un macchiato s’il vous plaît,” she said smiling. (Hello, a macchiato please.)

“C’est quoi ça?” (What is that?) The woman snapped back with that trademarked Parisian mélange of impatience and contempt. Of course, she knew damn well what a macchiato was—espresso with just a splash of steamed frothy milk—but she’d be a son of a gun before she let Italian barista lingo kill her culture. In France, it’s a noisette, goddammit.

This interaction warmed my heart. I had found myself, by God’s grace, seated at an establishment in utter denial—or perhaps defiance—of the rapidly changing world around it. We find a similar kind of malignant identitarianism in today’s political extremes, but when confined to a mom-and-pop café, it’s totally benign (I’m sure) and rather quaint.

After all, in 2025, macchiato has become a completely acceptable and very commonly used term to refer to the same drink, but as Tony Soprano might have said—out there, it’s 2025; in here it’s 1954.

“Ah oui, pardon. Un noisette s’il vous plaît.” (Right, sorry. A noisette please.)

The above interaction is an example of the only thing I want from a good café: ambiance. 

At most cafés, the food is for the birds. In fact, whenever someone says “Oh, I’ve been to Paris. I really didn’t think the food was all that good,” it’s almost assuredly because that person spent two days of their one-week “Europe trip” in Paris indiscriminately selecting cafés for their sustenance.

What’s wrong with that? Is it a mistake to eat at cafés?

Usually yes, it is a mistake, because cafés are designed to perform many tasks, but cooking excellent food is not chief among them.

The lines between cafés and other kinds of restaurants, like brasseries and bistrots, are sometimes a bit blurred. Nevertheless, the authoritative encyclopedia on food in Paris, On va déguster Paris, defines a café as an establishment where one consumes coffee, other drinks, and ‘petite restauration,’ or casual food, in the dining room or at the counter, from early morning to late evening (Gaudry et ses amis, On va déguster Paris).

But even without this definition, you’re probably able to summon the image of a Parisian café: the bustling terraces, the tiny cast iron tables, the clinking of beer and wine glasses, the cigarette smoke, the zinc countertops, the old man reading the paper, the slick waiter. 

These gathering places encapsulate a kind of—ahem—joie de vivre à la Parisienne that one simply won’t find in New York or Tokyo. At a café, time fades away. There is no such thing as “being in a rush.” In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s codified into French law that as long as your ass is pressed against that linoleum wicker café chair, you own it.

Put more elegantly by Noël Riley Fitch, “If the French, as Henry James believed, excelled in the art of living… one of the most visible manifestations of this art is the café. Here one can sit in peace for hours not hassled by impatient waiters or waiting customers. Here one can read and write in the morning, conduct business in the afternoon, and laugh and argue with friends at night.” (Fitch, the Literary Cafés of Paris)

How do we find the places with character—true character?

Start by looking inside at the counter. Are people standing there? Are they chatting with the barman? With each other? Reading the paper? 

Observe the decor. Does it look old? Or does it look like someone built it to look old? Does it look authentic, or does it look like a Disney World rendering?

Ambiance is abstract, so to make things more concrete, here are…

Charm is a difficult concept to define and still more difficult—perhaps even impossible—to manufacture, but you know it when you see it, just as I did when I first saw Au Rêve, a tiny café and a veritable institution of the Rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre’s north side. I was drawn in by its forest green awning, its blue neon sign, which has shone bright since the 1950s, and its perfectly proportioned facade. I doubt these proportions were very carefully planned. Nobody obsessed, for example, over golden ratios and Fibonacci sequences. It just happened that way.

As the scene of the macchiato/noisette incident, Au Rêve has charm to burn—and they know it. When eighty percent of your customers are regulars and half of them greet the staff with la bise, it can be tough to get any respect as an ordinary civilian. But I don’t take it personally, and neither should you. Just order a noisette, and take in Parisian life at this true café de quartier.

Oh and by the way, I wouldn’t hesitate to eat here either. I have not yet tried their food, but it actually looks quite good. Will report back.

Voilà another address with gobs of charm, but this time the nostalgic décor—curved copper countertop, large mirrors, Art Deco lettering—is counterbalanced by a young, line-art-tattooed, hipster staff.

If you’re thinking, “Gee, sounds like a good spot for a jazz concert,” you’d be correct. Jazz groups and other bands perform regularly at La Fontaine, but even when there’s no live trio, the scruffy servers will probably be spinning their Spotify playlists featuring Cortex, Pharoah Sanders, etc.

The food here, I can confirm, is delicious. During regular dining hours, La Fontaine offers café classics with cosmopolitan twists like a Tuscan tartare: much like a traditional tartare only elevated by a confited tomato paste. The afternoon hours give way to a reduced menu of sweets for those in the mood for a goûter, and a small list of savory dishes like a croque-monsieur for those who missed lunch.

To be clear, I wouldn’t eat here if it were the only place open on Eid al-Fitr and I had just spent the month fasting with Cheech and Chong. But, again, the food is not the point. In fact, I could have chosen any café in this vicinity, because the idea here is to experience the magic of the Latin Quarter.

Nearly every evening, neighborhood locals and students from the nearby Sorbonne University clamber into seats on the tightly packed terraces of the Place de la Contrescarpe to tie one on with their friends. The buzz emanating from this square can be felt all the way up the Rue Mouffetard to the Placette de Jacqueline de Romilly. It is a sight to behold and a wonderful reprieve from Gen Z loneliness statistics.

Feel free to reply—even just “noisette”—if you enjoyed this edition of Club des Meal, and don’t forget to share it with your café-loving friends.

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I’ll see you in a couple weeks. In the meantime, for the love of God, do not call it a macchiato.

Max