Raining cups
Dressed for coffee
A regular customer, of a espectable demeanour, never left home without her umbrella. In all the hubbub of people and waiters, rarely did the staff concern themselves with the crockery left on the counter after customers had left. One day, however, as there were fewer customers than usual, they noticed that the customer in question did not have a cup in front of her and so decided to keep an eye on her. One rainy day, they noticed the customer enter and, after she had drunk her coffee and looked one way and the other, put the saucer, cup and spoon unobserved into her hat. They approached not in a confrontational manner, but in a discreet and well-mannered way, without touching on the subject of the theft. After all, it was only a cup and saucer. The lady, without losing her composure, headed towards the door and, distractedly, opened her umbrella, at which all the crockery rained down on her head. She ran off down Chiado and never drank coffee at A Brasileira again.
In an age when it was still common for cafés to have doormen, normally responsible for parking the few cars and looking after the good name of the establishment, employees were uniformed. Dressed in black, they wore a starched shirt front with a collar. Customers always wore a tie, and the strict dress code was controlled by the waiters. “With the artists it was different. They never appeared in overcoats, but I remember some funny-looking suits. We didn’t bother to look. We used to say ‘It’s Senhor Almada’ or ‘It’s Senhor (Eduardo) Viana’. It was totally normal for them to be dressed differently from everyone else …”. As it was common practice to wear a hat, it was considered good manners to take it off when you entered an establishment. On his return from Brazil, after his aerial crossing of the north Atlantic, Gago Coutinho - acclaimed as a national hero - decided to have a coffee at A Brasileira. Stopped by the doorman and requested to remove his hat, he refused, insisting it was part of his uniform. The doorman, unwilling to make an exception, refused to let him in and in the end Gago Coutinho indignantly walked away.
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