Café Lomi
What: Café Lomi Where: 3 ter rue Marcadet, 75018 (18ème arrondissement) Web: http://www.cafelomi.com/ When: Wed-Sun 10am-7...
What: Café Lomi
Web: http://www.cafelomi.com/
When: Wed-Sun 10am-7pm
Métro: Marcadet-Poissoniers (lines 4 and 12)
Price for a café crème: 3.90E
Food: Really tasty sweet and savoury pastries
Prior to September, Café Lomi's only preoccupation was the roasting of high quality coffee beans to provide a number of Paris' new wave cafés with the main ingredient. Thankfully this changed, and now they are sharing their coffee brilliance with everyone.
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For those of you who speak French, have a look at this segment on France 2 about coffee in France, featuring Café Lomi!
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The place is owned by a French fellow called Aleaume, whose nickname was Lomi as a child and so he gave his café this catchy name. Paul, an Australian from Melbourne who has lived here with his wife for a few years, is the official roaster and is in charge of a great deal of the operation. He's the friendly face that greets you when you walk inside, and he always seems to be up to something creative in the workshop on the other side of the glass. Two of the baristas, Sandra and Pierre, used to work at KB Café before making the change, and not only are they both extremely cool and talkative, but have been passionate about good coffee since (or perhaps before) their respective trips to New Zealand and are very experienced in the business.
The space is really good. It's big, open, extremely well designed, with numerous seating options and a decent sized bar to lean at and have a chin wag. The beans are roasted on site, which guarantees their freshness to perfection. There is free wifi and a selection of franco- and anglophone reading material (magazines, newspapers, etc.) carefully laid out on the bar.
Food options are still not quite as extensive as one might hope, with a range of wonderful sweet and savoury pastries and other nibblies they make in their corner kitchen, but it's not far from the good ethnic food joints of Barbès and Clignancourt if you're really starving.
The area is the kind of cool, multicultural, slightly dodgy yet super interesting place that, in my opinion, represents in many ways the 'real' Paris. No 850E pairs of shoes in the shop windows, no lovers taking romantic photos in front of the Eiffel Tower, no snooty five-star waiters looking down on you, no gimmicks, just straight up Paname. You can also walk up to rue Lamarck and then la Butte Montmartre for a good jaunt afterwards.
They sometimes do coffee tasting sessions, although I don't remember the last time that happened, and they do barista courses. They provide barista training to all the baristas who sell coffee with the Lomi logo on it (although most people who work in these sorts of cafés are already coffee samurais anyway).
Café Lomi is definitely my favourite café in Paris. Between the location, the staff, the quality of the coffee, the atmosphere and the price, you just can't go wrong. I just wish they were open every day of the week.
-Good Coffee In Paris
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