Fringe Cafe. Paris, France

Fringe is a cafe that is, self-assuredly so, a space for more than just excellent coffee. It was voted in 2017 to be some of the best coffee in Paris (and in my thorough survey of the city’s third-wave coffee, I would have to validate this acclaim). But as its namesake suggests, it is also a space in which there exists an ongoing “activity that is related to but not part of whatever is central or most widely accepted.” In the case of Fringe, good coffee intersects curiously, and yet sophisticatedly, with photography. The cafe’s logo reads “Fringe: coffee food photography.” The shop itself—a minimalist’s paradise—is decorated with vintage cameras and on the walls hangs an Avante Garde photography installation. In one image, a woman wears a braid in the front of her head and it covers her eyes. In another, a bouquet of pink flowers struggles to stand out against a pink wall in a sunlit room. On the wooden bookshelf which stands in the entryway, there are on display both magazines and literature on coffee as well as portfolios of award-winning photos.

Coffee and art and health-food, the three things upon which Fringe’s eclecticism is predicated, have a reputation for being highly pretentious and exclusive institutions. As a barista at an artisanal coffee shop in Charlottesville, Virginia, I have learned that coffee is more complicated than iced-vanilla lattes and that some of the best coffee tastes like tomato soup. Tomatoes are among some of the tasting notes which coffee can evoke. Coffee can also taste like blueberry pie or lemonade or hazelnuts or a leather purse. Coffee can be nutty or chocolatey or highly acidic or malty or musty or smokey. And yet I firmly believe that none of these things matter as much as the enjoyment which one ascertains from sitting down with a friend or with a book and drinking coffee slowly and existing mindfully.

That is where Fringe succeeds at de-stigmatizing these pretentious institutions. By introducing simple art and simple food in a space that is decorated simply and yet is warm, Fringe is the perfect hideout for anyone who seeks refuge from the business of their everyday. When the barista took my order at the small, wooden table by the window, she sat down. I was initially caught off guard by this, as if I should move my things and make room for her at the table, like she might stay for a while and we might catch up like old friends. And thus in my first moments in Fringe, the pace at which life within the cafe exists was immediately realized, and I settled into its slowness of which I felt I had been personally invited. I ordered an oat milk latte, and the barista stood up from the perch she had taken on the bench on the other side of my table.

The oat milk latte was delicious. As the morning dragged on and the smell of warm cardamom buns lingered in the air, I ordered avocado toast and a juice of apples, celery and ginger. Quintessentially French, the avocado toast was served on the freshest and most delicious bread, a thin slice of multi-grain toast. It was topped with salt and pepper and an abundance of sesame seeds.

Elsewhere, in the US, avocado toast is being served with crushed avocado that has been doused in olive oil and topped with every seasoning under the sun spread on flimsy day old toast. There is something specific to Paris (or Europe more generally) in the way restaurants allow fresh ingredients to speak for themselves. Delicately layered on top of the bread was fresh avocado, perfectly ripe and thinly sliced. I ordered an egg, which came on the side. It was soft boiled and when I broke it on top of the avocado, yolk slowly enrobed the avocado and ran down the side of the toast. I ate the toast one bite at a time, cutting it with a fork and a knife and dipping it in the uncontained egg yolk that now puddled on the plate. As I ate, I sipped on the juice which the same color green as the fresh avocado. The juice was cold and refreshing. With each sip, you could taste each ingredient at first separately and then together. Celery juice is one of LA’s most polarizing health craze. Where the potency of the ginger threatened to overpower the flavor of celery juice, with its more watery and subtle flavor profile, it was remarkably the celery juice which I tasted first. The flavor of ginger came after. And the apple, disguised completely, was rather the perfect sweetness according to which the juice was made utterly enjoyable.

I ate and drank slowly as I read “The Sun Also Rises” by Earnest Hemingway and observed the goings-on of the other customers at the cafe—the couple to my right who were kind to one another and shared each thing they ordered; the group of girls who all sat on their phones, not talking to one another; the old man at the counter who read the paper. Thus as the cafe’s name suggests, Fringe is a space not only for coffee or for food or for photography, but for each person to decide what is they most want, devoid of any expectations. And the soft indie music that plays throughout the shop provides the ideal hum against which conversations can be had and work can be done and independence of thought can be fostered. When I first walked into Fringe, this was the feeling that resonated most, that I, among everyone, was welcomed.