Coffee in the Countryside - Revisited
When I wrote this first post six months ago, it was a rough sketch: a small, quiet place outside Paris where coffee could be made without the usual pressures. No landlord clock, no race to open, just time to do it right.
Since then, the sketch has been refined into a blueprint. I’ve mapped the workflow beneath the surface, argued for repetition as craft, planned pallets and logistics, and obsessed over materials—paper, labels, cups, bags—so the outside matches the care of what’s in the cup.
I’ve questioned taboos (yes, blending), imagined a guest experience designed to protect the calm, and traced the train lines that make a “petite fermette” feel connected, not remote.
The idea hasn’t gotten bigger. It’s gotten clearer. Slow over fast. Fewer choices, better choices. Made by hand, on purpose.
Today we’re reposting this first post to reflect on where this project started, and why our journey forward remains the same.
The Village Between Two Cities
In August, much of Paris shuts down as people leave on vacation. Many shops close for three or four weeks, while larger stores and those in tourist-heavy neighborhoods stay open. In September, everyone talks about “la rentrée” like “back to school” in the States, but here it applies to everyone. Everyone returns, shakes off the lazy rays of sunshine. Paris looks well rested, already offering its annual preview of Fall before the calendar ticks over.
September marks the return to work, school, and research. My wife and I pick up our lists of contacts, areas of interest, and alerts, and slide back into our routine: homemade bread, toasted; freshly roasted coffee; and real-estate listings.
In France, countryside listings can be fickle. Some linger unchanged for months after a home has sold. Others reappear every week with new photos and a new price.
When we finally come across something that looks exactly right, our first reaction is less “Eureka! I’ve found it!” and more “What’s wrong with it?”
Behind the Scenes
Coffee professionals love to focus on the thing we work so hard to find, source, roast, grind, extract, and serve. That’s the part with aroma and applause. But behind every cappuccino is a whole other world: the back office.
In France, the love of bureaucracy is happy to make this world even more excruciating than it might be elsewhere. Forms for forms. Numbers for numbers. Stamps for stamps. Meanwhile, tech startups over here keep releasing clever ways to streamline everything, from health insurance to transport passes to taxes. It’s progress, yes, but the behind-the-curtains part of a business still takes as much planning and preparation as the fun stuff on the bar.
The Way Forward
I’ve been working as a coffee professional for some years now. One thing I love, one thing that keeps this industry free to evolve, is how few of us started here. Nearly everyone I’ve worked with came to coffee from somewhere else: art or design, finance or pastry. We bring those old tools to a new bench.
When a product with such a long history is constantly seen by fresh eyes, it becomes free to change.
So the questions never stop:
What if we tried this?
Why hasn’t anyone ever made coffee like that?
Who grew this variety, and why not another?
Hidden Gems
We keep full-time jobs and part-time dreams, sprinting between them with a phone full of listings that promise “hidden gems.” On weekends we run for the station, still half on work calls, and throw ourselves onto whatever train will take us to the next maybe. Sometimes that train moves at ten kilometers an hour for reasons no one can explain. Sometimes its engine and brakes are not on speaking terms. Sometimes we’re fifty minutes late and already texting the agent: so sorry, still on our way.
“Fifteen minutes from the station,” the listing says. Fifteen minutes can mean a sunny stroll, or thirty minutes along a forest road where wild boar consider their options in the middle of your lane. We don’t have a car yet, so it’s Uber—when Uber exists. The app is confident days in advance and then coy an hour before, then thirty minutes, then five. Or silent. There’s sometimes a taxi, if you can find a number. And if it happens to be on their route. The driver shows up smiling, narrates the town’s entire recent history (it was better before they removed the fountain, traffic is a nightmare now), and quotes the 20-minute ride at 51€, card accepted. She reminds us we’ll need a ride back, too, (you’ll have to coordinate that with my office though).
A Local Table, A Global Conversation
"Don’t ask me how this scales. Ask me how this spreads." — Dan Barber
Not long ago, every fine‑dining menu was judged by the same yardstick: How close could the chef land to the canonical duck confit, the flawless bouillabaisse, the perfect coq au vin? Today, we arrive at restaurants with a completely different hunger. We don’t want the same dish executed immaculately. We want a dish that could only have been imagined here, on this soil, by these hands.
Coffee, oddly, still lives in yesterday’s dining room. We slip into a new café, puff up our critical feathers, and decree, “I shall judge thee by the merit of thy flat white! …Ooh and may I have a cookie, too?” In response, most specialty coffee bars around the world have converged on a single, safe template: same gear, same drinks, same pale pastries, delivered with the same earnest smile.
Which leaves us with the same restless question the restaurant world faced a decade ago: What’s next?
Digging Deeper
When I was little, maybe six or eight, we lived in a modest suburban house with a backyard that felt impossibly large. Huge trees lined either side, and the far end touched the land of a local animal doctor, so occasionally a lost duckling would wander up to our door.
It was there, with my mom, that I first began gardening.
Made by Hand
This is a project I want to build slowly. To spend years refining and growing. To make something that carries the best of what I’ve learned—and everything I still want to explore.
I’ve drawn since I could hold a pencil. Studied fine art. Worked as a graphic designer. I’ve been a florist, delivering bouquets by bicycle. A shoemaker, sewing one-off bags and stockings from scraps. I’ve made jam from family recipes and inherited a cookie recipe laser-etched onto a cutting board in my mother’s handwriting.
And coffee…
Lay of the Land
For those unfamiliar with Paris—or with how the city fits into the wider map of France—it helps to know about our layered public transit system, which is constantly being remodeled and expanded. The three main layers of rail travel here are the Paris Metro, the TER, and the TGV.
The Metro is without question the most iconic. Just saying the name conjures images of white-tiled tunnels with arched ads, and well-worn subway cars rattling through the dark while the Eiffel Tower’s spotlight swings its nightly arc over the city, keeping watch.
But the layer I want to focus on here is the TER—Transport Express Régional…
Mixing It Up
Blending remains taboo in specialty coffee.
Say the word and you can feel the room stiffen—how dare you muddy a prized geisha with something else? For years, we've celebrated purity: single origins, single varietals, singular stories. But as I cup hundreds of coffees each season, I find myself wondering... what if we’ve misunderstood the true potential of the cup? What if we stopped treating coffee like a solo act—and started treating it like a canvas?