Photograph of Café Bräunerhof under GNU Free Documentation License via Wikipedia.
Public Domain Photograph of Cafe Central via Wikipedia.
A click on the photographs will take you to the coffeehouse websites.
“. . . a coffeehouse is a place where you feel at home, even though you’re not at home.” poet Kurt Tucholsky
I’m told that my paternal grandfather died when my father was a child, leaving his relatively young mother with five children. My father, the youngest and the only boy, was the family’s hope for the future. The women worked, scrimped, and saved – no doubt he did as well – so that when he was old enough,they could send him to the United States, the land of “golden opportunity.” It was his duty then to work and send money home. For reasons of which I’m unaware, he didn’t come straight to America. He made his way from Turkey in 1917 to England and finally to the United States (Manhattan) in 1919.
My father spoke little of his adventures, but he did talk of the cafés as one of his two pleasures, the other being “language.” That he occasionally took pleasure in the cafés is not surprising. They must have seemed comfortingly familiar. Or, perhaps, now traveling in countries both European and Christian, he had access to what may have been denied him back home on the basis of his religion and Greek mother.
My father was born and raised in Constantinople (it had not yet become Istanbul), which is perhaps the birthplace of café culture as we understand it today. Kıraathane were well established in Turkey in my father’s day, the first having been founded in the late 1500s in Constantinople with coffee imported from Yemen. These coffeehouses were an exclusively male domain. The gentlemen would gather to talk, to read (perhaps poetry, which is valued in the East), and entertain and engage one another with music and backgammon.
Illustration: Turkish Coffeehouse, Ottoman Empire
The coffeehouses in Vienna started with coffee that was appropriated from the Turkish in 1683 during a battle that was the turning point of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars. The Viennese cafés were also hubs where people came to talk, write, play games (probably chess and backgammon) and simply to read the newspaper. Coffeehouse customers were never rushed away and often stayed many hours.
Café Central, clearly one of the most well-know of the Viennese cafés even now, seems to have been more famous for its clientele than its coffee. Today it appears to be as much a tourist stop as anything (this assessment from an inveterate armchair traveler), but in earlier times history notes that customers included writers, poets, artists, philosophers and thinkers of every ilk. Among the most well know was the Ukranian, Lev Davidovich Bronstein a.k.a. Leon Trotsky. Though Trotsky, who turned his back on his bourgeoisie background and embraced the proletariat, was a regular, I’m sure my father and his like were not. Ironically though, my father was a true prolitarian in what I understand to be the classical Latin sense from which the term is derived: a male child, the only wealth of his family and the only wealth they had to offer their country. There must have been cafés where poor and relatively illiterate people such as he could rest and get their social needs met. Such cafés might welcome a young man dressed in ragged clothes, perhaps carrying a worn carpet bag with a few meager belongings and kese (Turkish money bag) with the modest saving won by hard toil and fiscal restraint.
Illustration: Discussing the war in a Paris Café, Illustrated London News circa late 1800s. From Vienna, the café custom is said to have spread throughout Europe.
I have no way of knowing whether or not Vienna was in fact a stop my father made as he found his way through Europe. I have chosen it as a stop here because it was the place where the European café culture started in the 17th century and because I like Viennese Coffee, a delicious froth of coffee, chocolate, cream, and whipped cream – and that’s the recipe I choose to share here today.
Further, I think these coffeehouses of the past provide an enriching historic background on a pleasant tradition. Just like the old and venerable Middle Eastern and European coffeehouses, our American cafés are places where we meet friends to talk, mix with strangers, or go sit quietly alone to read or write. At one cafe near me, people gather to play chess, and there’s always a board out. Our favorites cafes may periodically offer jazz, poetry readings, or host other events.
Here are recipes for Viennese Coffee for one and for four. You will needed to prepare the following before assembling the drinks:
Whipped Cream: Make whipped cream using fresh whipping cream. Chill a bowl and beaters first and then whip the cream until it forms peaks.
Chocolate Shavings: Make chocolate shavings by holding a chocolate bar on waxed paper, using your non-dominant hand. With the other hand and a sharp vegetable peeler, firmly “shave” the side of the bar letting the savings fall onto the waxed paper. You will then be able to fold the waxed paper in half, keeping the chocolate centered, and tip it to distribute the savings over the whipped cream.
Coffee: Use whatever coffee and whatever brewing method is your preference.
Viennese Coffee for one
The recipe
- 1 cup of fresh brewed coffee, steaming
- Whipped cream
- 1 square broken in to pieces and some shaving of gluten-free semi-sweet chocolate
Place the chocolate pieces in a cup and pour the hot coffee over, stirring well to melt it. Top with whipped cream. Sprinkle with chocolate shavings.
Viennese Coffee for four
- 1 cup whipping cream, whip half and set aside the other half
- 1 3-oz bar of gluten-free semi-sweet chocolate
- 3 1/2 cups of freshly brewed coffee
Make enough chocolate shavings to sprinkle on four cups. You don’t need much. It’s mostly for decoration. Break the rest of the bar into pieces. Simmer the 1/2 cup of whipping cream that you set aside and, when it’s hot, add the chocolate pieces. Stir well to melt the chocolate and mix. Add the coffee, stir and simmer the mixture until little bubbles start to form on the side of the saucepan. Pour into cups. Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
Here are links to more of our coffee recipes:
Photograph courtesy of Petr Kratochvil, Public Domain Pictures.net.
