Welcome to the Coffee House Cafe in North Dallas, a locally-owned community gathering place where our team looks forward to serving you! We are open for breakfast, lunch & brunch and known for our chef inspired dishes, specialty lattes and mimosas. Our handselected coffee and espresso beans are 100% certified organic, fair trade and locally roasted. Stop by and experience one of the "Best Coffee Shops in Dallas."
We serve expertly prepared espresso, coffees and organic teas, all chosen with pure passion for excellence in every cup. Freshly delivered pastries, snacks and specialty sandwiches will complete your experience. We look forward to serving you soon.
NEW! We have recently introduced the Coffee House Cabaret, offering a wonderful selection of beer and wine. Of course our complete line of specialty drinks including our ever- popular coffee and Lotus flights are also available at the Cabaret.
Think of us as your friendly, neighborhood coffee shop!
A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves various types of coffee, espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-caffeinated beverages. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, fruit, or pastries. In continental Europe, some cafés also serve alcoholic beverages. Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations. Some coffeehouse chains operate on a franchise business model, with numerous branches across various countries around the world.
While café may refer to a coffeehouse, the term "café" generally refers to a diner, British café (colloquially called a "caff"), "greasy spoon" (a small and inexpensive restaurant), transport café, teahouse or tea room, or other casual eating and drinking place.[1][2][3][4][5] A coffeehouse may share some of the same characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. Many coffeehouses in the Middle East and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world offer shisha (actually called nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek, and Turkish), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah. An espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks.
From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: a coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. A coffeehouse can serve as an informal club for its regular members.[6] As early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer-songwriter performances, typically in the evening.[7]
The English word café to describe a restaurant that usually serves coffee and snacks rather than the word coffee that describes the drink, is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660.[12] The first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffee house).[16]
The first coffeehouses in the Islamic world, qahveh khaneh (Persian for coffee house), appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul in the 16th century and in Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.[17][18]
Until the year 962 [1555], in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale, and began to purvey coffee.[20]
In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established, soon becoming increasingly popular. The first coffeehouse is said to have appeared in 1632 in Livorno, founded by a Jewish merchant,[22][23] or later in 1640, in Venice.[24] In the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, coffeehouses were very often meeting points for writers and artists.[citation needed]
The traditional tale of the origins of the Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Ukrainian cossack and Polish diplomat of Ruthenian descent. Kulczycki, according to the tale, then began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard, also being the first to serve coffee with milk. There is a statue of Kulczycki on a street also named after him.
However, it is now widely accepted that the first Viennese coffeehouse was actually opened by an Armenian merchant named Johannes Diodato (Asdvadzadur).[repetition][25] Johannes Diodato (also known as Johannes Theodat) opened a registered coffeehouse in Vienna in 1685.[26][25] Fifteen years later, four other Armenians owned coffeehouses.[26] The culture of drinking coffee was itself widespread in the country in the second half of the 18th century.
Over time, a special coffee house culture developed in Habsburg Vienna. On the one hand, writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, bon vivants and their financiers met in the coffee house, and on the other hand, new coffee varieties were always served. In the coffee house, people played cards or chess, worked, read, thought, composed, discussed, argued, observed and just chatted. A lot of information was also obtained in the coffee house, because local and foreign newspapers were freely available to all guests. This form of coffee house culture spread throughout the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century.[27][28]
Scientific theories, political plans but also artistic projects were worked out and discussed in Viennese coffee houses all over Central Europe. James Joyce even enjoyed his coffee in a Viennese coffee house on the Adriatic in Trieste, then and now the main port for coffee and coffee processing in Italy and Central Europe. From there, the Viennese Kapuziner coffee developed into today's world-famous cappuccino. This special multicultural atmosphere of the Habsburg coffee houses was largely destroyed by the later National Socialism and Communism and can only be found today in a few places that have long been in the slipstream of history, such as Vienna or Trieste.[29][30][31][32]
From 1670 to 1685, the number of London coffeehouses began to increase, and they also began to gain political importance due to their popularity as places of debate.[40] English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries were significant meeting places, particularly in London. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.[41] The coffeehouses were great social levelers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. Entry gave access to books or print news. Coffeehouses boosted the popularity of print news culture and helped the growth of various financial markets including insurance, stocks, and auctions. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. The rich intellectual atmosphere of early London coffeehouses was available to anyone who could pay the sometimes one penny entry fee, giving them the name of 'Penny Universities'.[42]
Though Charles II later tried to suppress London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public still flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the wits gathered around John Dryden at Will's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden.[43] As coffeehouses were believed to be areas where anti-government gossip could easily spread, Queen Mary and the London City magistrates tried to prosecute people who frequented coffeehouses as they were liable to "spread false and seditious reports". William III's privy council also suppressed Jacobite sympathizers in the 1680s and 1690s in coffeehouses as these were the places that they believed harbored plotters against the regimes.[44]
By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center. According to one French visitor, Antoine François Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government", were the "seats of English liberty".[45]
Jonathan's Coffee House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Lloyd's Coffee House provided the venue for merchants and shippers to discuss insurance deals[repetition], leading to the establishment of Lloyd's of London insurance market, the Lloyd's Register classification society, and other related businesses. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's.
In Victorian England, the temperance movement set up coffeehouses (also known as coffee taverns) for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house.[46][47]
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