At first glance, Radiodays seems to have all the markers of just another specialty coffee cafe near the Canal Saint Martin: wooden tables and vintage metal chairs, a brick accent wall, an orderly shelf of lightly dogeared books, wedges of Anglo-inspired cakes under a glass dome next to a gleaming Kees van der Westen coffee machine. But Radiodays gently resists any accusations of redundancy by pushing the homemade aesthetic to the max, right down to the graham cracker crust on the chocolate cheesecake.
Coffee was almost an afterthought for Radiodays founders and childhood friends Ibraham Basbous and Emmanuel Arzoumanian. โAt first, we just wanted to make cakes,โ explains Basbous, who tells me to call him Beebo for short. โThen we started thinking about how we were going to sell them.โ This was three years ago, when good coffee was starting to show up in Paris, but hadnโt quite become the cafe-spawning phenomenon it is today. Coffee and cakes seemed like a natural combination, and the pair embarked on a two-week training program at local roasterย Coutume.
The duo’s Kees van der Westen espresso machine visible from the sidewalk is not a statement piece; itโs just one element of Beebo and Manu’s carefully crafted space where comfort is imagined as a series of cared-for details. โWe went to Holland and visited the workshop,โ says Basbous. โWe were particularly impressed with this machine because of how precise it is at every level: temperature, pressure, everything.โ Precision is a leitmotif at Radiodays: from the reverse osmosis water filter to the color-coordinated plates to the dusting of nutmeg on a home-steeped chai latte. โThat harmony of color and detail is what puts people at ease,โ says Basbous.
A visit to Radiodays is a little like being invited over to a friendโs house for coffeeโa friend that happens to have really good taste in music and a slight obsession with color-coordinated tableware. Yes, thereโs a turntable and those dogeared books are comics, but they arenโt just for show.ย Customers are welcome to thumb through a copy of their favoriteย graphic novel over a filter coffee.
While the pair didnโt start out in the coffee world, they seem to have found an outlet for their seemingly unrelated skills in opening Radiodays: Ibraham Basbous left a job in marketing and communications that took him around the world; now he channels his experience into cultivating relationships with customers who tend to be regulars from the neighborhood. Emmanuel Arzoumanianย hasnโt quit his day job as an astrophysicist yet, but the cafe gives him a chance to escape the solitude of his laboratory. โCoffee and baking are actually very scientific. They go really well together,โ says Basbous. Many cafes in Paris rely on outside bakers for their sweets, but Manu spends his evenings baking banana bread, carrot cake, and cheesecake, and thinking up seasonal soups and open-face sandwiches.
When Beebo says he and Manu โtake homemade all the way,โ heโs not kidding. Even the chai latte, which is often a bland sugary concession to the caffeine-averse, is made from scratch. โWe tested many different combinations of spices before hitting on one we liked,โ says Basbous. The final result is gently spicy, vanilla-infused, and not overly sweet. โWe blend it with milk thatโs been heated to the temperature of a flat white, so not too hot, which preserves the flavors.โ
As I snap a few parting shots, Basbous dons a white apron and pulls a few plastic containers out of the fridge. โIโm going to make a cheesecake,โ he says. Hold the eye-roll: this is no slice of industrial cream cheese slathered in pseudo-strawberry coulis. โThe cheesecake takes a long time because we have to bake the graham crackers that go into the crust,โ he explains, weighing out a bowl of thick cream cheese, also prepared in-house, from scratch. โYou can make anything, if you want to, itโs so exciting,โ says Beebo. Soon he and Manu will keep the cafe open on baking nights so people can drop by and hang out with them. โItโs so nice to be in here and smell the cakes baking.”
This is Kate Robinson’s first feature for Sprudge.
