A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or cafe (also spelled as café from the French, Spanish, and Portuguese or caffè from the Italian) shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on providing coffee and tea as well as light snacks. Food choices range from pastries and muffins to soups and sandwiches. In some countries, cafes more closely resemble restaurants, offering a range of hot meals, and possibly being licensed to serve alcohol. Many coffee houses in the Muslim world, and in Muslim districts in the West, offer shisha, powdered tobacco smoked through a hookah. In establishments where it is tolerated, which may be found notably in the Netherlands, in Christiania (Copenhagen, Denmark), and in certain parts of Canada, cannabis is smoked as well.

From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides social members with a place to congregate, talk, write, read, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups.

Since the 16th century, the coffeehouse (al-maqhah in Arabic, qahveh-khaneh in Persian or kahvehane or kıraathane in Turkish) has served as a social gathering place in Middle Eastern countries where men assemble to drink coffee or tea, listen to music, read books, play chess and backgammon, and perhaps hear a recitation from the works of Antar or from Shahnameh. In modern Egypt, Turkey and Syria, coffeehouses attract many males to watch TV or play chess and have the "shisha".

The traditional tale of the origins of Viennese coffeehouses 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, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki. Kulczycki began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard. This has the ring of apocrypha to skeptics who find the story too pat — and the date too late.



In the 16th century there were coffee houses in Cairo and Istanbul , and in the 17th century coffeehouses opened for the first time in Europe. Coffeehouses first became popular in Europe with the introduction of coffee in the 17th century. The first Turkish coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford by one Jacob or Jacobs, a Turkish Jew, in 1650. The first coffeehouse in London was opened two years later in St. Michael's Alley in Cornhill. The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the Ragusan servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment *. Boston had its first in 1670, and Paris in 1671. The Cafe Le Procope *, which was founded in Paris in 1689, is still in business. It was a major locus of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.

Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. They were great social levellers, open to all (except, generally, women), and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and the gazettes read. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739 there were 551 coffeehouses in London, including meeting places for Tories and Whigs, people of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center, coffeehouses known as gathering-places for the wits or for stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors. According to one French visitor, the Abbé Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty."



Ladies were not permitted in coffeehouses. In a well-known engraving of a Parisian coffeehouse of c. 1700, the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffeepots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, decently separated in a canopied booth, from which she doles out coffee in tall cups.

In London, coffeehouses preceded the club of the mid-18th century, which skimmed away some of the more aristocratic clientele. Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's. In New York the Tontine Coffeehouse at the foot of Wall Street near the docks became a central meeting place. In small cities a coffeehouse functioned as a place where messages might be left and picked up. American coffee shops are also often connected with indie, jazz and acoustic music, and will often have them playing either live or recorded in their shops.