Why Old Dhaka Never Got a Coffee Scene (And What's Changing)
Old Dhaka has never been short of places to sit, eat and talk. That is perhaps the first thing to get wrong about its coffee history. The old city has always had its own version of the third place : tea stalls, restaurants, bookshops, boarding houses and food counters where people lingered, argued and watched the street go by. Banglabazar, for example, developed a particularly strong literary and intellectual adda culture, while tea stalls remain an important part of everyday social life. ( The Financial Express ) So the question isn't really why Old Dhaka never had a social coffee culture. It did. It never developed the particular kind of coffee culture that arrived in other parts of modern Dhaka. The coffee shop arrived with a different idea of space The contemporary Dhaka café often sells more than coffee. It sells somewhere to stay. A table, air-conditioning, Wi-Fi, charging points, comfortable seating and enough space to work can be as important as the espresso itself. That m...
