It's been a home-away-from-home for the extreme right Action Franaaise group under Charles Maurras in 1899; the poet and surrealist precursor Apollinaire in 1914 (who, with his friends, liked to provoke brawls); and, during the 1950s, Sartre's existentialists, a peaceful bunch who never got enough sleep to have the energy to fight.
During the 1890s it was home to Sartre's existentialists, a radical right-wing group of bar room brawlers.