Table and late-night drink, from Algiers café counters to Parisian editorial nights
Strong Black Coffee
DrinkDocumented☕facile5 min
A black coffee, short and strong, served piping hot in a small cup. Frank bitterness, drunk without sugar to stay up through the night or punctuate a conversation.
Why this dish? Camus was a heavy coffee drinker, companion to his cigarettes and late-night work sessions. At the editorial office of *Combat*, the newspaper he directed at the Liberation, strong coffee fueled the late deadlines; it accompanies the very image of the writer at manuscript, typewriter and cup within reach.
At *Combat*, on deadline nights, it was coffee that kept us on our feet, black and strong, downed between two cigarettes as the proofs came in. I like it short and burning, without fuss, as you drink it at the counter in Algiers, standing, the time for an exchanged word. It's an honest bitterness that wakes the mind without deceiving it. Pour it strong, and you'll know what my writing nights were made of.
Ingredients
- •Finely ground coffee — a good dose (base)
- •Water — very little, for a short coffee (extraction)
How it was made : In Camus's Algeria as in post-war Paris, coffee was taken at the counter, standing and strong. Cafés were places of sociability and intellectual work: one would remake the world and correct manuscripts amid cigarette smoke.
Sources : Olivier Todd, *Albert Camus: A Life* (Gallimard, 1996) · History of the newspaper *Combat* (1944–1947)