Café de Flore

The Flore is the Left Bank as the world imagines it, and unlike most clichés it still functions. Opened 1887 on Boulevard Saint-Germain, it was Sartre and Beauvoir's office during the Occupation, and the awarding committee for the Prix de Flore still meets upstairs. The room hasn't been redesigned into something contemporary, which is the point — red moleskin banquettes, mahogany, mirrors, white-aproned waiters who have been there for decades. The food is competent brasserie standards, the coffee is fine, the espresso-and-newspaper ritual at a window table is what you came for. Best at 9am before the tour buses, or after midnight when the room belongs to the neighborhood again.