Since its opening in 1880, Verlet has been a table and counter for coffees and teas, spices and candied fruits. Verlet is then the first coffe shop to imagine roasting and serving coffee.
Created in 1880
A few steps from the Palais Royal and the Louvre, Verlet remains the oldest Parisian coffee house to roast the traditional way and bring to life the taste of French coffee. Inventor of single-origin coffee tasting, daring importer, passionate about rare terroirs and new tastes, Verlet invites amateurs to taste or take away more than thirty coffees and forty from the best tea gardens in the world. Close to the counter with fragrant drawers and large tea pots, you can have breakfast, lunch, taste, have a cup of coffee, tea, herbal tea or chocolate in a decor inspired and preserved from the 1920s. The wooden pedestal tables, the mirrors, the old parquet floor, the delicious scent of freshly ground coffee, everything gives Verlet its strong personality and its Parisian charm.
At the court of Louis XIV
In 1880, the date of its creation, Verlet was one of the rare Parisian stalls to offer quality coffee, “home-roasted”, on the sidewalk in front of the shop. Every morning, a metal drum mounted at high temperature is turned on by hand crank to uniformly “burn” the light green grains from the Americas, the West Indies and Africa, until they are perfectly cooked, revealed by an inimitable color called “Monk’s robe”, typical of French roasting, which Verlet specializes in. . Lovers and good houses are already getting their supplies from Verlet, the heiress to the history of coffee in France, since its introduction in the mid-17th century at the court of Louis XIV. Coffee, like tea and chocolate, are then called “Exotic hot liquors”. Coffee was served by the first “cafetiers” in a few rare places in Paris in the 1670s, in the street or in small stalls.
The beverage of fine minds
In Paris, coffee, carried by its energizing virtues, became the beverage of fine minds, philosophers, accompanied the progress of society, stimulated its thinking and its transformations. In 1921, the shop on rue Saint-Honoré was bequeathed to the young Auguste Woehrlé, known as Verlet. Sailor on merchant ships and importer of coffee from Latin and Central America, the young man moved to Paris to take over the establishment of his godmother. He devotes it to coffees, teas and spices discovered around the world. Passionate, he creates blends of appreciated coffees, named “Haute Mer” and “Grand Pavois” in memory of his travels. He set up an elegant coffee lounge where connoisseurs come to have lunch and taste his compositions expressed with a percolator, as well as teas, infusions and pastries.
Taste and authenticity
A time closed during the Occupation, Verlet reopens and renews with its quest for quality products. The young Pierre worked there alongside his father, then succeeded him in the early 1960s. Verlet was then the first house to imagine roasting and serving coffee, origin by origin: thus were born a pure Brazil, a pure Colombia, a pure Kenya. , and so many other rare vintages that it is now possible to acquire and taste in all their authenticity. Bold and innovative, Maison Verlet remains today a pioneer of single-origin coffees in France. Since the 1990s, Eric Duchossoy has pushed Verlet’s curiosity further by being passionate about coffees from rare terroirs, teas from the best gardens, production from small plantations, new tastes.
256 Rue St Honoré, 75001 Paris
