Hot chocolate and tea rooms: the Parisian autumn afternoon

There is an hour in Paris that visitors often overlook: le goûter, the afternoon snack. Between four and six, as the light fades and the damp creeps in, Parisians sit down to a steaming cup and a pastry. In October, the ritual becomes almost a necessity.

Parisian hot chocolate has nothing in common with a sweet milky drink. It is thick, dark, served in a small jug with a pot of whipped cream on the side. Angelina, on rue de Rivoli, has built its reputation on it for more than a century; the queue under the arcades says as much. The trick is to go on a weekday, as the afternoon opens, or take it away and drink it in the Tuileries just opposite.

For tea, Mariage Frères opened its first shop in the Marais and offers hundreds of varieties, served in a colonial setting of wood and brass. The tea room upstairs is one of the quietest spots in the neighbourhood in the late afternoon. Ladurée, for its part, remains the address for macarons and painted panelling, on the Champs-Élysées as on rue Royale.

But the best tea rooms are often the least famous. In every neighbourhood, a well-regarded pâtisserie sets a few tables at the back of the shop. You eat the same tart you would have bought to take away, sitting down in the warm, for a few euros more. Look for the window that draws local residents, not the one that draws coaches.

A few customs worth knowing. Le goûter is not a meal: you order a drink and a pastry, sometimes to share. The best-known tea rooms do not take afternoon bookings, hence the queues. And a tea ordered without further detail usually arrives plain, without milk: you have to ask.

In every apartment we leave our own neighbourhood addresses for le goûter, the ones we go to ourselves. They are often two streets from your door, and that is where a rainy afternoon turns into a good memory.