INTERVIEW
CAFÉ CESAR
Y GEOrGETTE
Maison 123
WINTER 2024
CAFÉ CESAR Y GEorGETTE
20 Rue Molière, 75001 Paris
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your career as a woman running the Cesar y Georgette café?
I’m Iman, and I’ve been the manager of La Dépendance hotel since April. The hotel and coffee shop opened in September 2023.
I opened this hotel with other colleagues and I’ve become very attached to it. I’ve been a fan of the café since I was a little girl. This place is very much what I was looking for, thanks to the customer contact, which I really enjoy.
I advise people on what they prefer: stronger or weaker coffee, coffee mixed with milk and lots of other things. I think that with the team, we’ve managed to build a beautiful place in which we try to pass on our passion for coffee to our customers.
As a woman and as a person, as Iman, I see myself, I recognize myself in this place.
Can you tell us the story behind the creation of the coffee and what makes it so special?
The café was born around a very interesting concept. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo lived here, and was passionate about coffee. He met Georgette, his sweetheart, by offering her a cup of coffee. From this love story, the Cesar y Georgette Coffee Shop was born.
Cesar was Peruvian, which is why we offer 100% Peruvian products and coffee.
the omakasé experience
The Omakasé experience is a unique way to discover coffee. What exactly is it and how was it developed?
The OMAKASÉ tasting is a five-step process. Customers are given an introduction to how coffee can be prepared, and the opportunity to learn about different ways of making coffee.
The OMAKASÉ tasting is a five-step process.
FIRST STEP: Coffee leaves
The first step is the coffee leaves. It’s a very light beverage, a little like tea. Dried coffee leaves are infused for 3 minutes in boiling water.
SECOND STEP: Coffee cascara
Cascara is the coffee pulp burnt in a machine.
THIRD STAGE: Cold Brew
This coffee is extracted cold for 12 hours. It’s starting to feel a little stronger than cascara and coffee leaves.
FOURTH STEP: V60 filter
A 3-minute infusion with 3 filter passages to obtain the best of the classic Americano.
FIFTH STEP: Choice of coffee
The customer chooses which coffee to have. Usually, customers love to add a touch of matcha, or even an espresso to taste the pure coffee, which is quite strong compared to all the other steps.
How do you select your coffee growers and how does terroir influence the flavours you offer?
Our coffee producer is currently ÉCOLE NATIONALE DU CAFÉ, which supplies us with Brazilian coffee. He works with the coffee shop, but also with the whole group. An exception is Cesar y Georgette, where you can also find Peruvian coffee, a little chocolaty, and custom-made by OMI. We also offer decaffeinated coffee from TERRE DE CAFÉ.
For the selection, we tasted a lot of coffee, which enabled us to choose the coffee that was right for us. Adapted to what we wanted, and what we wanted to offer our customers.
The coffee is a fine balance of French and Peruvian influences. How do you manage to merge these two cultures in your creations?
We add the French touch more in our pastries, because all the pastries we offer are French. Our coffee is Peruvian, but we can serve it French-style, as a café allongé. This mix of cultures is also balanced by the decoration of the coffee shop and the hotel. We’ve tried to blend the French style with the Peruvian.
Your café is a place for sharing and conviviality. How do you recreate this warm atmosphere on a daily basis?
We always try to be very friendly with our customers, we’re like a little family. We try to understand their tastes, so we can offer them the best experience. Most of the people who come here are real enthusiasts. We can also ask them for advice, because for the most part, they’re people who drink coffee every day, in different structures, so they know very well the difference between the different flavors.
We get a lot of positive feedback, in the sense that our coffee is quite special. This is partly due to the Peruvian coffee we offer, which you can’t find everywhere.
The little chats and exchanges we have with coffee shop customers help to make the place a little more homely and cosy. It’s the human side that makes the atmosphere warm.
For coffee lovers who have never tasted Peruvian coffee, What's he going to take from us? What do you think would surprise them most?
The taste is quite strong and bitter. For people who don’t drink coffee regularly, we advise against it or recommend it, depending on the customer’s desired experience. We explain to our customers that espresso coffee is quite strong, and that being able to mix it with a little milk makes it a little sweeter. We also invite them, if they really want to discover Peruvian coffee, to taste it on its own to get a feel for the bitterness and chocolatiness this coffee has to offer.
What are your plans for the future of the CEsar Et Georgette café?
We’d like to develop our food offering a little further. To be able to offer different pastries, designed around the coffee and drinks menu we offer. We’re going to work with a chef from our group, with whom we’d like to make matcha cookies or something else that can be linked to our menu.
We have a lot of competitors, so we really want to offer something original like the OMAKASÉ tasting.
We also have a lunchtime offer coming soon, as we want to give customers the chance to come and enjoy good food, in addition to our drinks.
