I’ve had great coffee in Rome and Rio and at Sigmund Freud’s favorite café in Vienna, but my best cup ever was at Mme Sophie’s apartment in Saint Germain des Pres.
My most chic antiques dealer insists upon the best.
After we finished off her crusty five-meat cassoulet, she reached into a cabinet full of curious kitchen equipment and took out a device like the one you see here: two glass globes, a connecting siphon tube, and a bunsen burner.
“Here’s one thing you’ve never seen in Paris, Rosoff,” she said with a wink, lighting the
burner and proceeding, well, to make coffee.
The result was uncommonly rich. Smooth. Crisp. And watching the process was great fun...hot water rising up through the tube at a perfect brewing temperature into the top globe, where you put the coffee, and then being suddenly sucked back down quickly to extract the essence with a loud, bubbling sound.
“The French chemist Lavoisier invented this to make coffee in his laboratory,” Sophie explained. “He used to serve it to Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.”
I read later that the vacuum coffeepot, as they call it, was actually patented by a Madame Vassieux in Lyons in 1840. But I’m pretty sure she stole the idea from Lavoisier.
Mme Sophie is never wrong about these things.
5-Cup Tabletop Yama Vacuum Coffeepot (No. 1050). Heatproof tempered glass and high-impact plastic, dishwasher safe, with butane-fueled bunsen burner. Entertaining. Educational. And a great cup of coffee.
NB: Pls.
click here to see and order our arguably more pragmatic (and certainly larger) 8-cup stovetop Yama model (No. 1051); thank you.
Dimensions: 16”
Capacity: 20 oz.
