Dine like the Parisian Elite: Inside the City’s Most Luxurious Restaurants

Parisian landmarks make the perfect playground for a group dedicated to a sybaritic vision of dining in the city, as Jennifer Ladonne discovers…

At sunset on the Rue Royale, liveried doormen mind the red velvet ropes outside Maxim’s, which has been Paris’s watering hole for the rich and famous since its founding in 1893. My date and I needn’t have worried about entering an empty dining room at the unfashionably early hour of 7.30 pm, as the place is packed and pulsing with an energy as propulsive as the music.

Once so famous that its name was synonymous with Parisian high life, Maxim’s was known around the world in its 20th-century heyday and attracted everyone from royals to rock stars. But over the past few decades the mythic restaurant lost its lustre until Paris Society stepped in. After a several-million euro facelift, the rejuvenated historic landmark radiates glamour anew: its famous stained-glass ceilings, murals of frolicking nymphs and sinuous Art Nouveau lamps and woodwork gleam over red plush banquettes, while cocktails and conversation flow and soigné diners shimmy between tables as though at a convivial dinner party.

Next door at Bistrot Minim’s, Maxim’s little sister, Paris Society has revived the timeless codes of the French bistro. Here, more casual customers tuck into a menu of traditional French comfort foods while white-aproned waiters glide through the Art Nouveau dining room. Around the corner at the fabled Laurent, also on the Paris Society roster, affluent diners lounge on damask banquettes sipping champagne under glittering chandeliers. Set in Louis XIV’s former hunting lodge, for decades Laurent held three Michelin stars (its top honour) and was a star in the city’s fine dining firmament. But, like Maxim’s, it languished. The haute-gastronomy experience failed to enchant a younger, Instagram-savvy crowd that demanded glamour, excitement, visibility -‘eatertainment’ in British coinage – and found the connoisseurship of haute cuisine tedious. Within a few square kilometres of the capital, a dozen Paris Society outposts cater to a young, cosmopolitan crowd ready to shell out for an atmosphere that satisfies a fantasy of Parisian sophistication and glamour.

“Our guests come to experience something unique, at the intersection of gastronomy, aesthetics and Parisian energy,” said Alexandra de la Brosse, Paris Society’s director of communications, a triumvirate that speaks to a new generation of diners. “These are places where you feel transported, where every detail counts, and where the experience goes far beyond the plate.”

Transforming landmarks

The recipe seems foolproof: take a Paris legend, sleeper landmark or museum-preferably with a wide terrace and stellar views- hire an interiors star to create a spectacular décor, and concoct a menu of French luxury dishes. It has also proven lucrative. Laurent de Gourcuff, who founded Paris Society in 2013, boasted revenues “of nearly €16m at the end of 2021”, according to Le Monde, and growth of 64% between 2019 and 2021. This on an investment of €4m to €6m for every project. Paris Society opened nine new locations in 2021 alone and has not slowed down. To date, the company’s Parisian holdings include 20 restaurants, 14 nightclubs, five guinguettes (riverside cafés with entertainment) and a hotel, with venues in seven other locations around France, including Marseille, Saint-Tropez and Megève, and more internationally. In late 2022, the hotel group Accor, an early investor in the company, acquired Paris Society for €330m, keeping De Gourcuff at the helm.

If you’re a museum-goer in Paris, you’ve likely dined in a Paris Society restaurant. With his first museum endeavour, Monsieur Bleu at the Palais de Tokyo, De Gourcuff discovered a lucrative, and overlooked, niche in Paris’s most frequented cultural centres. The restaurant was an instant hit when it opened in 2015. The formula proved so irresistible that De Gourcuff expanded to other cultural landmarks, including Lulu at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Coco at the Opéra Garnier, Dar Mima on the roof of the Institut du Monde Arabe and Girafe at Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, all with sprawling terraces and several situated on rooftops with eye-popping views.

Though reviews are not always stellar, the restaurants are a vast improvement over the usual museum café, typically no more than glorified cafeterias managed by concession caterers. Reviews, in fact, do not seem to have much bearing on Paris Society’s success. Take Baronne, for example. Set in the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, a grand Belle Époque mansion not far from the Arc de Triomphe, each of the restaurant’s four dining rooms is more splendid than the next – and as packed, despite a middling rating on TripAdvisor. None of Paris Society’s restaurants has garnered consistently rave reviews, but that hasn’t dampened the appetite of the crowds who gather nightly.

It’s not all about the food

Never underestimate the pull of buzz. Paradoxically, homogenising the dining experience in favour of ersatz luxury and the illusion of insider status becomes the culinary equivalent of a conspicuous logo on a designer handbag. Anyone with ready cash can acquire one. Even if the luxury menus are formulaic – foie gras, caviar, lobster, sole meunière, a whole fish for two boned tableside, plus plenty of crudos and truffles in one form or another they are prepared conscientiously.

But the food is not necessarily the draw – or, at least, it’s only a part of it. The chic party vibe is the real focus. “We have reconciled gastronomy with entertainment, restoring the restaurant to a social, festive and vibrant role,” said De la Brosse.

Critics have lamented the death of the authentic Parisian eatery at the hands of groups like Paris Society that can afford to buy a piece of Paris history. Could they be missing the point? The Paris dining scene has never been healthier or more diverse. Though there’s truth in the notion that those who get the buzz get the bucks, there’s as much a place in Paris for tried-and-true neighbourhood bistros as there is for a dream of a Parisian dining experience. Let the diner decide.

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Lead photo credit : Baronne_photo_Romain Ricard