Choose your café with care
I always thought Munich was the city of beer. But somehow that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. In recent years coffee shops have sprung up all over the city. Wherever you look new ones appear, almost daily, or so it seems. It began when Italians opened little coffee shops around Munich, selling their own popular brands and bringing a touch of the Mediterranean to our streets with the rich scent of freshly roasted coffee beans. Then German “life-style” entrepreneurs moved into the coffee business and customers could down their favorite beverage at a trendy bar, the coffee served from shiny chrome monsters resting on the counter, straight into paper cups—very stylish. It wasn’t just a case of ordering a coffee, espresso or cappuccino, every artificial flavoring known to man and sundry varieties of milk were available to be added to a coffee-like substance, which was consumed while perched on a bar stool at a plate glass window. A restful perusal of the daily paper had given way to mindless people-watching, the sinful slice of cream cake or the delicate pastry had been elbowed aside by cellophane-wrapped sandwiches of rubbery white bread and cardboard muffins. The English-sounding names given to these German chains were part of a deliberate marketing strategy intended to suggest an international panache. Nearly Starbucks, but not quite: so far Munich has not succumbed to this particular delight—thank goodness. Though the city would be, strategically speaking, an ideal location for the global player from Seattle. Establish a few shops in an area where there are plenty of other cafés and the market is already saturated and then take some initial losses into account, while customers are gradually siphoned off from other establishments. As these large corporations (in Germany Starbucks is allied with Karstadt/Quelle) have more staying power, they only have to sit out the demise of the long-established coffee shop: why not simply create a few non-smoking areas in existing places and nobody will need Starbucks. The excellent Munich cafés—whether it’s Café Münchner Freiheit, Luitpold or Kreuzkamm, or even the little Italian coffee bar behind the Alter Peter—do not need to bandy about ridiculous slogans praising “Corporate Social Responsibility” in order to disguise nasty underhand practices. In the last 12 months the city administration has granted licenses to an astonishing 300 new locations—and this at a time when gastronomy is suffering a bad recession. Sometimes I am inclined to ask myself who exactly drinks all this coffee? In theory every adult in Munich should be suffering heart palpitations as the result of too much caffeine—though perhaps most of the stuff being served is just ersatz-coffee or those watery, perfumed concoctions that are currently masquerading as coffee. By the way, the next open-air coffee-drinking season will soon be upon us and this year there is a special highlight to look forward to. After years of building and renovation work, the Theatinerstrasse is now once again a great promenade, with its attractive open-air cafés—this is one part of town where beer drinking has been sidelined. Even the much-neglected tea drinker is catered to here, with a little tea-to-go establishment at the entrance to the Amirapassage. Why not take advantage of the next fine spring day and take a stroll from Marienplatz, down Theatinerstrasse to Odeonsplatz and back along Residenz- and Maximilianstrasse. Never mind if your budget doesn’t run to the luxury articles on sale in this part of town. Why not spoil yourself with a good cup of coffee at one of the elegant open-air cafés? And if you’re too broke even for that, this part of Munich is filled with places where you can sit down for free and enjoy the beauty of this city: the steps of the Feldherrnhalle, the ledges of the Residenz or the steps in front of the Residenztheater and opera. There’s space for everyone in Munich, even outside the coffee shops.