Coffee shops are not just places to merely drink coffee. In Constantinople the word for coffee houses meant ‘schools of wisdom’, and in London the coffee shops were known as ‘penny universities’
The famous clerical gourmand, Sydney Smith (b1771) said, “If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intelligent beverage.”
Wherever coffee houses sprang up they were the gathering places for the intellectuals, politicians and literary people of the day. The French Revolution was planned in the cafes of Paris, and at the very same tables some of the great literature of the age was conceived and written. Serious business was transacted in the coffee houses of 17th-century London where the arrival of coffee was simultaneous with the huge expansion of trade, each assisting the development of the other. Some of the great financial institutions of the world such as the stock exchange and Lloyd’s of London actually had their beginnings in those coffee houses.
This is an extract from an article in Leading-Edge Bakery & Food Service Journal by Janet Clarkson titled ‘The Other Uses Of Coffee’.
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