Scribblings › Pen & Ink & Drink: One Writer's Favorite Paris Cafés

Paris is a wonderful city in which to dream. It can also be a fine place to write. The trick is not to spend all of your time dreaming about writing. This is easy to do. The city, as I've learned during a year working on a new novel here, inspires distraction as much as concentration.

Of course, if you're coming to town for a brief vacation with no real expectation of making headway on a magnum opus, Paris is perfect. Amidst your visits to the museums and sightseeing spots, you can lose yourself in the expat writer's reverie without much angst over the literary merit of the entries in your travel journal. Enjoy a few days sipping at the nectar of literary fantasy.

That nectar, of course, is coffee, black, served in a tiny china cup. For anyone who's ever identified with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, or Baldwin, writing in a Paris café, if only for a fleeting hour, is a bit of a dream come true. Rest a single sugar cube in a silver spoon, balance it just-so on the rim of your demitasse, and watch the dark liquid climb up through the crystals. As the sweet is saturated by the bitter, the million details that fill your mind begin to be connected by vast existential questions. Dip the spoon, stir the brew, and begin to ink the pages of your notebook.

Sit down. Go slowly. Savor each sip and each observation. This is one of the secrets of Parisian café culture, and good advice for a writer in sketching mode. Behind the bar of every café in the city, you'll find a board labelled Consommations or Tarifs des Consommations listing drink prices; at least two different prices for every beverage. The first price is the charge to take your drink quickly, standing at the counter. The second, usually about 50 cents more, is the price of sitting down and being served at a table. This is the writer's choice. (There's occasionally a third, slightly higher, price on the list, at cafés with particularly attractive outdoor terrace seating.)

Don't balk at the upcharge; it's your garret rental for the day. The price of even a single coffee—plus a flask of water, if you request it—served at a table buys you the right to sit and scribble for as long as you wish. You will never be pressured to buy another drink. The servers will respect your musing privacy, only approaching if you flag their attention. (Likewise, feel free to bring your notebook along to lunch or dinner at any Paris bistro; the price of a meal includes your table for at least three hours. Only extremely tourist-oriented restaurants plan on more than one seating at each table per mealtime).

Popular guidebooks will point would-be café écrivains to Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots on the Boulevard St. Germain. And while these former haunts of Hemingway, Sartre and the whole Lost Generation crowd are worth a peek for their red leatherette banquettes and whiff of history (Their often half-empty upstairs rooms are also fine spots for after dark card games fueled by carafes of house wine), they are also terribly conscious of their historical status, selling souvenirs, jacking up their prices, and pulling in package tourists. Let yourself wander and find your own off-the-beaten path café; you're more likely to run into a story that hasn't already been written.

One day, while taking notes on the terrace of café Le Turgot on the Rue Condorcet, in an untouristed quarter just ten minutes' walk from Sacré Cœur, my eye was caught by the light glinting off the silver-sequined shirt of a tall mustachioed Frenchman. Soon enough, he approached my table for a bit of small talk and the delivery of his carte de visite, a sort of business card with name, address, phone number, but no indication of business. This is one of the un-American delights of Paris: friendships initiated with no concern about each other's career choice or comparative social status. "What do you do for a living?" is a question not asked in the first few minutes of any conversation.

It was not until a few weeks later, when I paid my first visite to the address on Gerard's card, I learned that he was the chief designer for a major house of couture. As a result, the next few months found my café jottings recounting tales of cocktails with fashionistas, a candlelit dinner on a boat in the Seine, and a memorable post-fashion show evening with a sultry, statuesque model. It was only when Ginger leaned her halter-topped frame forward on a banquette that I noticed the spray of hair atop her coccis bone and learned that, at birth, in Atlanta, her mama named her Walter.

Pulchritude of a less ambiguous variety can be found at Chez Prune, a bustling café with some of the sexiest, least pretentious server boys in town. To be honest, for all the people-watching opportunities here, it's hard to get much scribbling done, but it's a great, convivial spot to make a relaxed switch from the isolation of a day's writing and meet friends for an aperitif to begin a social evening on the town. (While open from mid-morning to late evening, meal service is only available at lunch.) Prune's floor is a riot of colorful mosaic tiles, and the warm yellow walls are decorated with paintings of olive vines. When the weather is warm, the floor to-ceiling windows swing open, tables are set on the sidewalk and the whole lively atmosphere merges with the flow of pedestrians along the Canal Saint Martin, across the street.

The Canal, with its working locks and waterside rows of chestnut trees is one of my favorite Parisian places to walk, think, and make mental manuscript revisions. Head north along the Canal for a half-hour and you'll reach La Villette, one of the city's most unusual, least tourist-trod parks. It's full of colossal, climbable red metal sculptures, a subterranean bamboo garden, and a healthy supply of hunky shirtless drummers, jugglers, and digeridoo players. In the park, the Cité de La Musique, a stark white music museum and concert hall, offers an elegant café of its own, marvelously quiet and meditative on weekday mornings.

Panis, on the Left Bank, is one of the few spots with a good view of Nôtre Dame where the beverage prices haven't rocketed to astronomical heights. At Panis, I would meet with other writers, some of whom worked dayjobs at Shakespeare & Company, the celebrated bookstore and bohemian expat hub just a block away. As the Seine rippled like gold foil in the late afternoon sun, we'd plan readings and soirees and discuss the state of the world over espressos, or in summer, slowly sipped tumblers of anise-scented pastis. With a little nudging, you can convince the playfully condescending servers to slip you a free dish of olives. At Panis, I made the accquaintance of the Kilometer Zero crew, a clan of international writers, artists and filmmakers who live rent-free, squatting in a spacious abandoned office building, where they put together an impressive literary magazine and hosts occasional neo-vaudeville spectacles, free and open to the public. One memorable evening at the squat featured a French pop singer, a brief political lecture, and a Japanese performance artist who sat silently as volunteer audience members cut off her clothes with a scissors. There have also been Swedish fiddlers, puppeteers, and a live human branding demo.

My personal favorite haunt is L'Escalier, a warm brown cave of a bar atop the slope of Rue Faubourg-St. Denis, a street lined with Turkish, Pakistani, and Indian hole-in-the wall restaurants and markets (Try the vegetable korma down the street at Sheezan). Robert, the genial owner, and Maria, a bartender who also does hair and make-up for theaters throughout the city, play a well-selected, low-volume blend of American soul and French electronic music on their sound-system to an eclectic clientele, ranging in age from students to seniors. It's easy to strike up a conversation here, but just as easy to sneak up the curving, weatherbeaten staircase at the back of the room and escape into mental solitude. The upper-level balcony of small tables is a perfect place to hide away for a quiet few hours, pen-in-hand easy (except during the busy lunch hours, from noon to 2, when food is served). If you're here in the evening, trade up from coffee to a bottle of Adelscott, a sweet, extra-malty beer unlike anything you'll find stateside.

I can't quite pinpoint what makes L'Escalier my own café of choice, or what makes my writing time there more productive than anywhere else in the city. There is a sense of disappearing off of the street into a city's hidden corners, there is the comfort that comes from being a regular anywhere, and there is a notable lack of pretense. In the end, though, this being Paris, there is simply a certain je ne sais quoi.

The details for each café discussed above (including Metro stops) are followed by information on a nearby attraction.

Le Turgot, 3 rue Turgot (corner of Rue Condorcet), Metro Cadet. With tables spilling out onto a wedge of cobblestone paving, complete with a few trees and a park bench, a classic example of Parisians wedging leisure and people-watching space into even the most bustling neighborhood. You'll be the only tourist here, even though it's a short walk from Sacré Cœur (Look up Rue Turgot...There it is!)

Montmartre/Sacré Coeur. Sure, it's tourist central, but the church is stunning, and the view of Paris at dusk is perhaps the city's greatest work of art. Go to make-out.

Chez Prune, 36 Rue Beaurepaire (on the corner of the Quai de Valmy), Metro Republique, Tel. 01 42 41 30 47. Excellent lunch and weekend brunch, about $15 (no dinner service, but open as bar/café until 1 a.m.; No reservations taken). Lively atmosphere and a crazy quilt of mosaic tile. Canal views.

Canal St. Martin. Among Paris' loveliest walks, at all hours of the day and night. Near Prune, the canal and its side streets are lined with charming boutiques and galleries.

Café de La Musique, Place Fontaine aux Lions, Metro Porte de Pantin, Tel. 01 48 03 15 91. A stark white modernist beauty looking onto Parc La Villette. Remarkably peaceful in the morning.

Parc La Villette, Tel. 01 40 03 75 75. One of the city's most exciting and untouristed leisure spots. Vast sporting and picnic lawns, stunning architecture, unusual gardens, music and science museums, theater, circus, rock concerts, and a free outdoor film fest in the summer.

Panis 21, Quai Montebello, Metro St. Michel, Tel. 01 43 54 19 71. An inspiring view of Notre Dame and a stone's throw from one of the world's legendary bookshops.

Shakespeare & Company, 37 Rue Bucherie, Tel. 01 23 26 96 50. Still the nexus of bohemian expat life in Paris, staffed largely by travelling young writers who work in exchange for sleeping space on the cots upstairs after the shop closes at midnight. Free readings every Monday night at 8 p.m. Ask the clerks for the latest on events sponsored by Kilometer Zero (also see www.kilometerzero.org) and other Anglophone arts organizations.

L'Escalier, 105 Rue Faubourg-St. Denis, Metro Gare de L'Est. The centerpiece of the downstairs bar is a magnificent weatherbeaten wooden staircase. Except during the busy lunch hours, the low-ceilinged upstairs balcony, except at lunchtime, is an ideal scribbler's hideaway. Situated on a street with the atmosphere of an exotic bazaar.

Sheezan, 84 Rue Faubourg-St. Denis, Tel. 01 45 23 18 77. Cheap delicious Indian food. Most dishes are 5 Euros. No reservations taken.