Café Anglais

**Status:** Closed in 1913. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Anglais)) **Literary passage:** “Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Café Anglais” — Henry James, *The Portrait of a Lady*. ([gutenberg.org](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2833/pg2833-images.html)) **Why it matters:** Café Anglais was one of the great names of boulevard luxury, and writers repeatedly use it that way. James makes it a mark of cultivated habit; Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Proust, and Karen Blixen all draw on its aura of expense, appetite, and worldly distinction. In *Babette's Feast*, the restaurant becomes almost mythical: the remembered standard against which transformative art at the table is measured. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Anglais))

13 Boulevard des Italiens, corner of Rue de Marivaux, 75002 Paris, France. ([en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Anglais))