Les Ambassadeurs (restaurant)

Les Ambassadeurs was a restaurant in Paris, France, situated in the Hôtel de Crillon. It closed on March 31, 2013, when the hotel closed for renovations, and in 2017 the space reopened as a bar, with Les Ambassadeurs being replaced by a smaller restaurant.

Le café-concert des Ambassadeurs. Edgar Degas, 1876–77. The singer is probably Victorine Demay.

History

Within the Hôtel de Crillon, which was built in 1758, Les Ambassadeurs operated as a restaurant since the mid-19th century. It reached its peak of fame as a restaurant and nightclub (a café-concert) in the last three decades of the 19th century. Always a center of entertainment for the aristocracy, in the 1870s it also became a regular destination of some of the best known figures of art and the demi-monde. Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec portrayed visitors at the night club,[1][2] and Aristide Bruant performed there.

Following a renovation of the hotel in 1981–85, the restaurant occupied a former private ballroom with windows looking out on the Place de la Concorde,[3] a few hundred meters from the Palais Garnier. It was decorated in an 18th-century rococo style, redesigned by Sybille de Margérie with furnishings by Sonia Rykiel.[4][5]

Les Ambassadeurs had two Michelin stars.[3] In the last decade of its operation, chef was Dominique Bouchet followed by Jean-François Piège[4][5] and finally when the hotel closed in 2013 for an extended renovation, Christopher Hache.[6]

In 2017 Hache opened a smaller restaurant, L'Écrin, within the renovated hotel; the former space of Les Ambassadeurs became a bar.[6]

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References
  1. See Toulouse-Lautrec's Fashionable People at Les Ambassadeurs (1893). A Study Archived 2008-02-21 at the Wayback Machine is at the Tate Galleries. See also Degas' Cabaret (1876–77) Archived 2007-10-11 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. George E. Smith, III, "James, Degas, and the Modern View", NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 21.1 (Autumn 1987) 56–72.
  3. Paul Goldberger, "Grand Parisian rooms on a legendary square", New York Times, July 7, 1985.
  4. John Mariani, "Grand Cuisine at Grand Hotels in Paris", Virtual Gourmet, July 10, 2005.
  5. Nigel Tisdall, "Paris: Summer in the city", Daily Telegraph, April 26, 2001.
  6. Thibaut Danancher, "Avec L'Écrin et la Brasserie d'Aumont, le mythique hôtel de la Concorde à Paris met les petits plats dans les grands pour sa réouverture le 5 juillet", Le Point, July 3, 2017, (in French).


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