ATwo mighty elephant sculptures hang in the entrance portal of the Riquet. Marble tiles line the entrance. Art hangs on the walls: from classic modern to the New Leipzig School. Newspapers from all over the world can be found on a chrome bar, and specialties are lounging behind the glass counter: Saxon Eierschecke and Frankfurter Kranz, marble cake, marzipan cake.
The fact that this is not Vienna, not the Central, the Landmann or the Prückel, but Leipzig, where the cafés have similarly euphonious names, such as the Kandler and the Grundmann, the Maître and the Corso, is immediately apparent to cake connoisseurs from the Eierschecke. But nowhere else in Germany is there such a variety of coffee houses with historical interiors, cakes, the obligatory newspapers and grim waiters. Every neighborhood has its coffee house. They are spread over the entire city center of Leipzig and the Gründerzeit quarters. A whole day is not enough to capture the variety of coffee establishments.