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Crystal's Country Cafe, in Oregon in the United States.

A café (/ˈkæfeɪ/ or /kæˈfeɪ/), also spelled cafe, in most countries refers to an establishment which focuses on serving coffee. The name derives from the French, Portuguese and Spanish word for the drink and is often pronounced "kaff" (/ˈkæff/) in the British English.^[1][2][3]

In the United States, "cafe" may refer to an informal restaurant offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches, also known as a "coffee shop", ^[4][5] while what is regarded as a café elsewhere is termed a coffeehouse.

Europe[link]

Café Terrace at Night, September 1888, by Vincent van Gogh.

In most European countries, such as Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, etc., the term café implies primarily serving coffee, typically accompanied by a slice of cake/tart/pie, a "Danish pastry", a bun, or similar sweet pastry. Many (or most) cafés also serve light meals such as sandwiches. European cafés often have tables on the pavement as well as indoors. Some cafés also serve alcoholic beverages, particularly in Southern European countries.

In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland a café (with the acute accent) is similar to those in other European countries, while a cafe (without acute accent, and often pronounced "caff") is more likely to be a greasy spoon style eating place, serving mainly fried food, in particular breakfast dishes. In the Netherlands and Belgium, a café is the equivalent of a bar, and also sells alcoholic beverages. In the Netherlands a koffiehuis serves coffee, while a coffee shop (using the English term) sells soft drugs (cannabis and hashish) and is generally not allowed to sell alcoholic beverages.

In France most cafés serve as lunch restaurants in the day, and bars in the evening. They generally do not have pastries except during mornings, where a croissant or pain au chocolat can be purchased with breakfast coffee.

In Italy cafés are similar to those found in France and known as bar. They typically serve a variety of espresso coffee, cakes and alcoholic drinks. Bars in city centres usually have different prices for consumption at the bar and consumption at a table.

North America[link]

A café or coffee shop is a restaurant with full-service tables and counters and broad menu offerings over extended periods of the day.^[6] In hotels, the coffee shop is a more popular-priced alternative to the formal dining room. Coffee shops often encourage families and provide special menus for children. To establish a family-friendly atmosphere, in many localities they do not serve wine or beer.^[7]

Etymology[link]

Evolution of the word Coffee [1].

The most common English spelling, café, is the French, Portuguese and Spanish spelling, and was adopted by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century.^[8] As English generally makes little use of diacritical marks, anglicisation includes a tendency to omit them and to place the onus on the readers to remember how it's pronounced, without being given the accents. Thus the spelling cafe has become very common in English-language usage throughout the world, especially for the less formal, i.e. "greasy spoon" variety (although orthographic prescriptivists often disapprove of it). The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English.^[9] In southern England, especially around London in the 1950s, the French pronunciation was often facetiously altered to /ˈkæf/ and spelt caff.^[10]

The English words coffee and café both descend from the continental European translingual word root /kafe/, which appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Italian (caffè); Portuguese, Spanish, and French (café); German (Kaffee); Polish (kawa); Ukrainian (кава, 'kava'); and others. European awareness of coffee (the plant, its seeds, the beverage made from the seeds, and the shops that sell the beverage) came through Europeans' contact with Turkey, and the Europeans borrowed both the beverage and the word root from the Turks, who got them from the Arabs. The Arabic name qahwa (قهوة) was transformed into kaweh (strength, vigor) in the Ottoman Empire, and it spread from there to Europe^{[citation needed]}, probably first through the Mediterranean languages (Italian, Spanish, French, Catalan, etc.) and thence to German, English, and others, though there is another well-based theory that it first spread to Europe through Poland and Ukraine, through their contacts with the Ottoman Empire.

See also[link]

Look up café in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Parisian café
• Viennese café
• Cafeteria
• Coffeehouse
• Greasy spoon
• Internet café
• Sidewalk cafe
• Transport cafe
• Café Procope
• Cafe Scientifique
• Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cafés

• Merriam-Webster: café
• Classic Cafes - The Very Best of London's Twentieth Century vintage Formica caffs