The Palais Royal Restaurant is tucked into the northeast corner of the Palais Royal gardens near the Louvre. The interior looks like a hotel restaurant (it is), and doesn’t hold much charm. During the summer months, however, white linen tables are set up outside under the same lovely arcades that hosted Paris’ first restaurants (and prostitution) centuries ago. It seems like an amazing place to have a meal on a summer night. When I arrived for my dinner in late May, I learned that the terrace wasn’t open (“too cold,” said a server who was sweating) and we had to sit in the slightly garish dining room. My disappointment vanished as soon as I started digging into the amuse-bouches that kicked off our 245€ tasting menu. Chef Philip Chronopoulos is crazy talented. His Greek-inflected cuisine was much more inventive and delicious than I had recently at L’Arpège (where he used to work) or Astrance. I keep thinking about that dish of Saint-Pierre (cooked in grape leaves) with saffron and the veal with rhubarb and mustard. Service was flawless, as I’d expect to find at a two-star restaurant.The interior is an awful drag, especially when one has booked (and paid a non-refundable deposit) with the hope of dining al fresco. Still, I’d go back for Chronopoulos’ food and the hope of one day enjoying it outside.
PALAIS ROYAL RESTAURANT
110 Galerie de Valois, 75001
Open Wednesday-Friday for lunch & dinner
Open Monday & Tuesday for dinner only
Closed Saturday & Sunday
Reservations online or at +33 1 40 20 00 27
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oUR PHOTOS OF PALAIS ROYAL RESTAURANT
IN OTHER WORDS
- Michelin Guide “This elegant restaurant boasts an idyllic setting in the gardens of the Palais Royal, a stone’s throw from the Ministry for Culture. Greek chef Philip Chronopoulos officiates, after working at Joël Robuchon’s Atelier (its Étoile location) and with Alain Passard. Using superb ingredients, he cooks up creative and striking cuisine, designing invigorating and remarkably mature recipes: fine mezze as an amuse-bouche, green bean salad with caviar and Isigny cream; or the fig, vanilla and elderflower millefeuille – a simply remarkable dessert. In summer, the terrace under the arcades offers you a setting of a standard to match your meal.”
- Alexander Lobrano “Le Restaurant du Palais-Royal is expensive, but it’s a superb choice for a special occasion meal in Paris, whether that occasion is a momentous one like a 50th wedding anniversary or a more daily one, like the decision to get a new haircut.”