There's a fine art to dining in the great galleries and museums of Paris.
Now, what is it about Paris? For some, it’s the culture and the chance to revel in the Mona Lisa, Rodin’s The Kiss or Monet’s Water Lilies. For others, it’s the food and the chance to revel in scallop tartare with candied lemon, delicate dandelion salad with bacon, and rose ice-cream with meringue and caramelised hazelnuts. These days we can do both, as several of the city’s museums have been restored and reborn over the past few years and the restaurants within them have also been revitalised for the better. I know what you’re thinking – never eat in an institution – but this is Paris, so you can forget plastic sandwiches, limp salads and stale cakes. Places such as Les Ombres in the Musée du Quai Branly and Le Saut du Loup in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs are headed by seriously talented young chefs, while the funky Tokyo Eat in the modern Palais du Tokyo is quirky, relaxed and fun.
So by all means get yourself a Museum Pass (even a two-day pass is great value and helps you skip the longest queues) and head straight for Paris’ wonderful museums and art galleries. And when you get hungry, stay right where you are.
Restaurant Musée d’Orsay
Musée d’Orsay, 1 Rue de Legion d’Honneur.
+33 1 4049 4814.
Anyone who loves impressionism is going to adore this achingly beautiful museum housed in a former railway station. There are so many truly groundbreaking works of art to see here – such as Manet’s Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe and Cézanne’s Card Players – that you could spend a week here without pause. But do pause, because the restored restaurant is one of the most beautiful rooms in all of Paris. A far cry from your usual museum cafe, it is a Belle Epoque fantasy of cherubic frescoes, glittering chandeliers and potted palms. The food, such as a terrine of beef shin and foie gras, and blanquette of salmon, is destined to be secondary to the splendour of the room, but will fortify you sufficiently for another foray into the world of art between 1848 and 1914.
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Tokyo Eat
Palais de Tokyo, 13 Avenue President-Wilson.
+33 1 4723 5401.
This is the “other” Paris – young, funky and full of humour; the antithesis of the humourless, artificial elegance of the grand boulevards and grand madames. Set in a severely grand 1930s deco palace on the banks of the Seine, this vast, bare-walled avant-garde exhibition and installation space has been a major destination for young Parisians since it opened in 2002. Equally bare-walled and vast, Tokyo Eat is a hugely popular global fusion canteen that, in spite of being more than a few years old, is still very much a restaurant du jour. Arty types, smart-suited businessmen and ageing bohemians sit under glowing pink flying saucer lights nibbling buttered radishes from vegetable meister Joel Thiébault, chinese cabbage salad, and chicken and fruit curry wrapped in banana leaves. A coffee tart billed on the witty menu as “absolutely fabulous” was not fabulous at all, but that’s modern art for you – risky.
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Café Marly
Cour Napoleon du Louvre, 93 Rue de Rivoli.
+33 1 4926 0660.
Regarded by many as the world’s finest museum, Le Louvre, alas, does not boast the world’s finest museum restaurants. Its most prestigious outlet, Le Grand Louvre, is stuck in a charmless spot with a try-too-hard menu. But at least the rapidly-becoming-ubiquitous Costes Brothers have established Café Marly in the glorious Richelieu wing upstairs on the Cour Napoleon du Louvre. Inside, the dining rooms are glorious, but in the warmer months, the place to be is on the long covered terrace with its dress circle views of IM Pei’s tantalising pyramid. The menu is the usual happy Costes mix of quasi-Italian pasta and Asian-inspired salads, as well as the popular croque monsieur (toasted sandwich) and a much-ordered chocolate martini that will give you strength to face the queues for the Mona Lisa.
Restaurant Georges
Centre Pompidou, Place Georges Pompidou.
+33 1 4478 4799.
Designed by then-unknown architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, the Centre Pompidou first opened in 1997. Today, this inside-out boiler room of a building is home to the largest modern art collection in Europe, including major works by Matisse, Modigliani and Picasso. Almost as big a drawcard as the art is the centre’s whiter than white, coolly minimalist rooftop restaurant, run by the zeitgeisty Costes Brothers. Every day, an arty, fashionably dressed crowd comes to soak up gasp-inducing views of Paris. A word of advice: if you don’t make an effort, you will be sartorially outshone by the waiters with their dazzlingly skinny suits and highly polished shoes. You may even be put in the shade by plates of king crab omelette, chicken spring rolls with thai basil, and the famous American-style “crackers cheese cake” with fromage blanc sorbet.
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Le Saut du Loup
Musée des Arts Decoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli.
+33 1 4225 4955.
Since the Musée des Arts Decoratifs reopened in 2006 after a 10-year refurbishment, the modern, light-flooded displays of furniture, ceramics, glassware and design have been a huge hit. It’s only fitting, then, that the museum restaurant should also be notable for its ceramics, glassware, modern furniture, and chic, minimalist, white-on-white design. Chef Pascal Bernier, who trained at the much-vaunted Lasserre, has put together a menu of sophisticated, good-looking dishes that attract an equally sophisticated, good-looking crowd. In summer, they pack into the outdoor terrace and, at night, slip in to the sleek upstairs bar (a hidden treasure) for cocktails. The food is very Parisian, design-conscious and fashionable without being silly. There might be a riff on three different, creamy taramasalatas, three miniature burgers “of today and tomorrow” served with a cone of pommes frites or a light, crunchy crab croustillant. Be sure to stay for “gourmet coffee”, which comes with three tasting portions of dessert.
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Les Ombres
Musée du Quai Branly, 1 Rue de Legion d’Honneur.
+33 1 4753 6800.
Designed by Jean Nouvel, the top-floor restaurant of the Musée du Quai Branly is capped with a glass dome in an iron framework – in clear homage to the Eiffel Tower, which is in full view. Inaugurated in 2006 by Jacques Chirac, the Musée du Quai Branly treats art from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas with the same respect given to Western art at the Louvre, with a collection of some 300,000 artefacts. At night, the restaurant is even more seductive, as the Tower glitters, candles flicker and a 360-degree panorama of Paris unfolds – and a little cup of warm duck parfait topped with a rich, light cream of white beans steals your heart. While the food is predominantly fresh, light, pretty and French, chef Arno Busquet ventures into the exotique with New World influences in highly finessed dishes such as roasted monkfish with tandoori spices, and candied lamb with dried apricots, cardoon and Chinese artichoke. This could explain the lengthy waiting list for a dinner reservation.
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Source: Qantas the Australian Way August 2008