Café A Brasileira (Porto)

The Café A Brasileira in Porto (2007)

The Café A Brasileira is a café in the Portuguese city of Porto from the late period of the Belle Époque . It is located at number 75 on Rua de Sá da Bandeira , diagonally opposite the Teatro Sá da Bandeira and a little above the São Bento main train station .

history

The pharmacist Adriano Soares Teles do Vale , who comes from Alvarenga in northern Portugal and works in Porto , grandfather of the filmmaker Luís Galvão Teles , had already emigrated to Brazil as a young man, where he had become rich as a trader and coffee producer at the end of the 19th century. When his wife fell ill, he returned with her to Porto in 1903, where she died a little later. Here he turned to creating points of sale for his Brazilian coffee, which he called Casa Brasileira or A Brasileira .

The Café A Brasileira in 1916 (photo by Aurélio Paz dos Reis )

Teles opened his first sales outlet in 1903 in what is now Rua Sá da Bandeira in Porto, right next to Rua do Bonjardim, where he previously worked as a pharmacist. Lisbon followed in 1905 (one in the Chiado district and one on Rossio), and he opened further branches in Coimbra, Braga, Aveiro and Seville, Spain.

In order to boost sales of this little-widespread coffee, he gave buyers a free cup of freshly brewed espresso in addition to a customer magazine with preparation instructions. With the increasing popularity of his coffee, which is now widely used throughout the country as Bica , he expanded his Brasileira sales outlets into coffee houses under the uniform name of Café A Brasileira , initially in Lisbon in 1908.

In 1916 his sales point in Porto also registered enormous demand, especially for the ready-made coffees, so that Teles decided to add a coffee room. This innovation hit the zeitgeist of the middle class in Porto, and the Café A Brasileira became a popular meeting place, inspired not least by the nearby avenue of the Avenida dos Aliados , which opened in 1916 and is still the most famous promenade in the city. Since the general upswing in intellectual life in connection with the First Portuguese Republic (proclaimed on October 5, 1910 in Porto), intellectuals and politicians also increasingly frequented the city.

Encouraged by its commercial success, Teles also bought neighboring buildings and reopened the café in 1920, now with several lavishly decorated halls. From then on, the city's artists, journalists, politicians and intellectuals preferred to frequent this place. In 1938, after renovations, Café A Brasileira reopened in its current size.

The café closed in 1990 and the establishment began to slowly deteriorate. In 2003 it reopened under the old name as a restaurant and café, in one part of the old café, while the other part was now operated by an international group under the name Caffé di Roma . In 2008 the history of the café ended again after a court ruling invalidated a sales contract with the owning bank, the BPI , which is a few steps further away . The bank then closed the café and sought to sell the entire building. A new opening in the meantime was short-lived.

In 2013 it became known that the former Portuguese soccer player and national coach António Oliveira had acquired the building and was planning to convert it into a hotel with 80 rooms. According to these plans, the café and restaurant are to be retained as part of the hotel's operations. Initially, the inauguration was planned for 2015, but the opening is still pending (as of March 2016).

Today, Café A Brasileira is registered as protected under the number 27096 in the Portuguese List of Historic Buildings SIPA.

gallery

Entrance to Café A Brasileira (2009)

View of the café: Rua do Bonjardim (left), corner of Rua de Sá da Bandeira (right), where the main entrance is

In the Café A Brasileira (2007)

Exterior view of Café A Brasileira (2009) as seen from the Teatro Sá da Bandeira
Historical photo from Café A Brasileira
O melhor café é o da Brazileira - The best coffee is that of A Brazileira: old azulejo advertising board of the café in Rua da Trindade in Porto