A black coffee, strong and bitter, prepared the old way and drunk without sugar, the companion of all working hours and all sleepless nights.

Why this dish? Van Gogh lived on bread and black coffee, which he drank to excess to keep going and work. He painted *The Night Café* (1888) in Arles, that place where, he wrote, “you can ruin yourself, go mad, commit crimes.” Coffee is inseparable from his nights of creative fever.

I'll tell you frankly: I have nourished myself on coffee and tobacco more than on bread, and I know it is unwise. But when work grips me, when yellow and blue fight on the canvas, something must keep me standing. You make it black, very black, bitter like the night of the Arles café, and you drink it boiling hot, without sugar, standing before the easel. It is not a gourmet's pleasure, friend — it is the fuel of a man who has only his painting to live for.

How it was made : In the 19th century, the poor often stretched their coffee with roasted chicory to save money. It was prepared by decoction or in cloth-filter coffee pots, and was the universal drink of workers and impecunious artists.

The contemporary twist : Serve it in an emerald green and red cup, the colors Van Gogh used in *The Night Café* to express “the terrible human passions.”

Vincent van Gogh · Charactorium