We jumped the gun, so to speak. That’s roughly the story of our first coffee drinker, who apparently tasted it in Istanbul before coffee itself had even arrived there. Ion Neculce ran headlong into the wall of Romanian medieval history with the account published in “O samă de cuvinte” (“A Few Words”), which became “gospel” in the Romanian online world after it appeared on Wikipedia, picked up from Evenimentul Zilei*. The chronicler mentions the Logofăt (Chancellor) Tăutu, who, in 1504, made a fool of himself at the Sultan’s court by knocking back his coffee in one gulp, like a shot of țuică (plum brandy).
„After Bogdan-Vodă took the throne, he sent Tăutul the Chancellor as an envoy to the Turks, when the country submitted to Ottoman rule. And it is said among the people that the Vizier had him seated before him upon a rug, and, having no proper footwear beneath his trousers – for his boots had been removed – he was shod only in stockings. And when they gave him coffee, he did not know how he ought to drink it. So he raised it in a toast: «Long live the Emperor and the Vizier!» And so toasting, he gulped down the little cup as though it were some other kind of drink.” A few clarifications are in order, which somewhat exonerate Neculce. The passage in question is included in “A Few Words Heard from Man to Man, from Old and Elderly People, Not Written in the Chronicles…” as the author himself tells us. We’re talking about July 1504, about Bogdan III, known as the One-Eyed, who succeeded Stephen the Great to the throne – the very ruler who sent Tăutu to the Turks. Neculce began writing his Chronicle in 1732, and “O samă de cuvinte” predates the chronicler’s most important work. The event is recounted over two centuries later, by which point it had already become folklore.
The history of the beverage shows that, in those years, the invigorating drink had not yet reached the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The chronicler İbrahim Peçevi mentions in his writings (1642–1649) the opening of the first coffeehouse in Constantinople. However, coffee had already been known in Istanbul since 1555, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, brought by Pasha Özdemir, governor of Yemen – a province it had reached from Ethiopia, the homeland of the famous tree with its aromatic, energizing fruit. It later became extremely popular, to the point that the court even created the title of kahvecibaşı, designating the Chief Coffee-Maker.
In Europe, coffee entered through Venice, a port of major commercial importance, in 1615. It’s said that, in the early stages of the trade, it could be bought from traveling merchants, who were mainly known for selling lemonade. In 1645, the first coffeehouse outside Ottoman territory is recorded in the city mentioned above (some studies point to 1629, but they don’t refer specifically to a space dedicated to the trade and consumption of coffee). In 1660, merchants in Marseille began importing it, and the city’s first coffeehouse is dated to 1671. In Paris – 1660. As for Vienna, there’s a well-known story of 500 sacks of coffee left behind by the Turks after the second siege, in 1682. It reached Oxford in 1637, but we can’t speak of an actual coffeehouse there until 1652. As for America, coffee arrived in 1668, and the first coffeehouse, “The King’s Arms,” opened in New York 31 years later.
We too began drinking coffee in the late Middle Ages. The custom, borrowed from the Turks, became an everyday habit at the royal courts and in the homes of the boyars. Plump and richly adorned, sprawled across their divans, our nobles began savoring their coffee alongside a pipe, accompanied by preserves and sherbets.
The first documented coffeehouse in Bucharest belonged to a Turk, “Hanie or Hamid, a former seimen (guard) of the Sultan”**, who in 1667 ran a coffeehouse in the “Upper Market” (roughly where the National Bank building stands today), which he sold to a certain Ivaz for 65 lei before he died. Later, according to records studied by two historians of the hospitality industry, the coffeehouse passed into the hands of an abbot: “In July 1693, Ivaz sold the coffeehouse to Cotroceni Monastery for 15 lei, as it had been built on monastery land“. It wasn’t the first public place where the famous drink could be enjoyed, since public baths were also equipped with ibriks and everything needed to prepare and serve it. That’s about where the details on this particular spot end – a place with an undeniable role in this little story, being the first dedicated coffeehouse in our country.
A few of the establishments that followed are even more interesting, though. “Bucharest’s second coffeehouse is documented in 1781, at Curtea Veche (the Old Court). On August 7, 1781, Alexandru Ipsilanti granted Ștefan Altentop, «baş alai ceauş», the princely plot next to Curtea Veche to open a coffeehouse“. We’re talking about the very ancestor of the Curtea Veche coffeehouse. “Ștefan Altentop, its owner, died in 1797, and his wife kept the place running until June 1812, when she sold it to Hagi Tudose Gabrovolin. Thirteen years later, in 1825, he in turn sold it to Hristi Emanuel Papazoglu, and from that point on there is no further documented mention allowing us to know precisely until what date it operated. After the Manuc complex was restored (in 1971), it reopened under the name «Cafeneaua Veche» (The Old Coffeehouse)“
“Around the same period, another coffeehouse stood on Podul Beilicului, today’s Calea Șerban Vodă, and enjoyed the privilege of never closing, so as not to upset the Turkish guests staying nearby at “Casa Beilic”“. This establishment marks the first known non-stop coffeehouse in our country.
The gap of over a hundred years between the first coffeehouse and the ones that followed shouldn’t be read as a void in coffeehouse history. There were plenty of them – the archives simply weren’t as generous with documentation. Their existence is confirmed indirectly through princely decrees issued by Nicolae Vodă Caragea and Mihai Vodă Șuțu, ordering that “there be no more talk in the ruling coffeehouses, concerning the state and other taxable matters“
(Constanța Vintilă Ghițulescu).
By the end of the 18th century, 14 coffeehouses had been counted, and by the middle of the following century, in 1852, the number had reached 38. By then we’ve entered a new stage – one where coffeehouses were categorized by type: European and Oriental (Turkish). Most of what we know comes from the notes of foreign travelers through the Romanian Principalities, memoirs, and records that historians constantly draw on, published in numerous editions edited by Nicolae Iorga, George Potra, or under the auspices of the Academy. So, in 1815, a certain Fr. Racordon noted: “… besides the European coffeehouses, which are fairly numerous in Bucharest, there are also several Turkish coffeehouses”. I was personally struck by this remark, from which we can deduce that the Western-style ones were actually more numerous.
