Seafood at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones Montparnasse was standard with writers, musicians and artists, a lot of them People who’d arrived in Paris to flee Prohibition. They beloved the world’s café tradition, centered across the Rotonde and the Dome which had each opened on the flip of the century. Two brothers-in-law, Ernest Fraux and René Lafon, who labored on the Dome and tried, however failed, to purchase it, determined to open a brand new venue as an alternative. They purchased the one obtainable premises, a moderately unpromising wooden and coal warehouse at 102 Boulevard Montparnasse, close to the junction with Boulevard Raspail, and commenced pondering massive.
Meals at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones Architects and interior decorators have been employed to rework the huge empty area and create an Artwork Déco inside the place every thing – the tiling, the furnishings, the lighting, the tableware – was customized made. The 33 supporting pillars must keep, however there have been loads of artists who’d simply left Montmartre for the cheaper, edgier district of Montparnasse who would embellish them with painted frescos. Legend has it that they labored in return without spending a dime drinks, though proof means that some no less than billed the homeowners for his or her work. Both manner, pleasure in regards to the new venue was constructing, particularly when a number of thousand invites have been despatched out for the opening night time social gathering on December twenty seventh, 1927.
The inside of La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones It was stated Le Tout Paris (all of Paris) got here and there have been certainly greater than 2000 company who completed the 1200 bottles of champagne by midnight, then partied on till the small hours. Illustrious company included the artist Man Ray and the author and movie director Jean Cocteau which definitely enhanced La Coupole’s repute. So maybe did the truth that the police have been referred to as at 5 A.M. to ship the final stragglers on their manner.
A go to to La Coupole on the Boulevard Montparnasse is at all times an occasion. A platter of seafood, piled excessive on a mattress of ice, swoops by on the arm of a black-and-white clad waiter. The inside’s painted pillars and Artwork Deco model could be glimpsed from the terrace and I’m swept again to the Jazz Age, when crowds gathered right here to dine, to drink and smoke, maybe to hearken to music and dance. For when it opened in 1927, La Coupole was an instantaneous crowd-puller.
Seafood at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
Montparnasse was standard with writers, musicians and artists, a lot of them People who’d arrived in Paris to flee Prohibition. They beloved the world’s café tradition, centered across the Rotonde and the Dome which had each opened on the flip of the century. Two brothers-in-law, Ernest Fraux and René Lafon, who labored on the Dome and tried, however failed, to purchase it, determined to open a brand new venue as an alternative. They purchased the one obtainable premises, a moderately unpromising wooden and coal warehouse at 102 Boulevard Montparnasse, close to the junction with Boulevard Raspail, and commenced pondering massive.
Meals at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
Architects and interior decorators have been employed to rework the huge empty area and create an Artwork Déco inside the place every thing – the tiling, the furnishings, the lighting, the tableware – was customized made. The 33 supporting pillars must keep, however there have been loads of artists who’d simply left Montmartre for the cheaper, edgier district of Montparnasse who would embellish them with painted frescos. Legend has it that they labored in return without spending a dime drinks, though proof means that some no less than billed the homeowners for his or her work. Both manner, pleasure in regards to the new venue was constructing, particularly when a number of thousand invites have been despatched out for the opening night time social gathering on December twenty seventh, 1927.
The inside of La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
It was stated Le Tout Paris (all of Paris) got here and there have been certainly greater than 2000 company who completed the 1200 bottles of champagne by midnight, then partied on till the small hours. Illustrious company included the artist Man Ray and the author and movie director Jean Cocteau which definitely enhanced La Coupole’s repute. So maybe did the truth that the police have been referred to as at 5 A.M. to ship the final stragglers on their manner.
Portrait of Jean Cocteau by Federico de Madrazo y Ochoa, ca. 1910-1912. Public area
The homeowners made positive extra speaking factors adopted. They employed an Indian chef to organize curry and serve it in costume alongside waiters serving Turkish espresso dressed within the model of A Thousand and One Nights. International newspapers have been supplied to encourage a cosmopolitan clientele and La Coupole stayed open day and night time. Some got here to peruse world information over breakfast, others to debate enterprise or politics over lunch, to benefit from the afternoon tea dances or the possibility to drink lengthy into the night time with fellow writers and artists. To squeeze extra prospects in, an open-air restaurant, The Pergola, was arrange on the primary ground, roofed over in 1931 to make it an all 12 months spherical attraction. Enterprise was booming.
Meals at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
Only a 12 months after opening, Le Dancing was opened on Christmas Eve, 1928. This was a trendy dance and music corridor within the basement, the place the ceiling was lined in mirrors. Individuals flocked to get pleasure from dancing à l’envers (actually “dancing the other way up”) to jazz and tango bands. Ernest Hemingway, an everyday at La Coupole, wrote that “the tables have been at all times full, new individuals saved arriving” and in a later decade, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have been noticed dancing there too.
Ernest Hemingway, Paris, circa 1924. {Photograph} within the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library/ Public Area
Certainly, the checklist of those that beloved La Coupole reads like a who’s who of Twentieth-century Parisian tradition. In its early days, the painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti appreciated to sit down and attract a nook and different visiting artists included Picasso and Matisse. Among the many writers have been the surrealist poet Louis Aragon and Hemingway’s contemporaries, Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. Joséphine Baker was a frequent visitor, as have been Mistinguett, as soon as the world’s highest-paid feminine entertainer, and Kiki de Montparnasse, the mannequin and muse who got here to typify the jazz period in Paris and the liberated tradition of Montparnasse.
Postcard, Alice Prin, c.1920-30. Picture: Julian Mandel, Wikipedia, public area
However La Coupole was not resistant to the tide of historical past. Many People went house following the 1929 inventory market crash, so through the Nineteen Thirties the best-known prospects have been French. Sartre and de Beauvoir each wrote about eating on the terrace and Marc Chagall, Édith Piaf and Jacques Prévert have been prospects too. The onset of World Warfare Two introduced large adjustments: the Pergola restaurant was closed, Le Dancing turned a restaurant area and the 11 P.M. curfew introduced the 24-hour tradition to an abrupt finish.
Dessert at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
Maybe the brasserie’s heyday was over, however after the conflict, issues picked up once more slowly. It was to La Coupole in 1957 that Albert Camus invited buddies and fellow writers to have fun being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Within the Nineteen Sixties, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin lunched right here on Sundays and in Could 1968, the scholar chief Daniel Cohn-Bendit climbed up on to a desk prime on the terrace to make his arguments. In 1996, former President Mitterrand got here to La Coupole for the final restaurant meal earlier than he died, eager to benefit from the lamb curry yet one more time.
Jane Birkin (C) Roland Godefroy, Wikimedia commons
A significant renovation within the Eighties put a number of flooring of workplaces on prime of La Coupole, however the ground-floor restaurant was left largely unchanged. The previous brasserie benches, mosaic flooring, Artwork Deco lamps and painted pillars remained. A brand new pillar, put in to interchange the previous staircase to the rooftop, was adorned with a frieze in homage to the unique Montparnos – the world’s artists and writers – together with Giacometti, Hemingway, Kiki de Montparnasse, Sartre and de Beauvoir. The outcome was the classification, in 1988, of the restaurant as a monument historique. At the moment its standing is famous; diners come for the historical past and the air of grandeur, but in addition, in fact, for the meals.
Dessert at La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
Described on its official web site as delicacies traditionnelle, the core of the menu is brasserie fare. You could possibly, for instance, observe an oyster starter or soupe à l’oignon gratinée with sole meunière or filet de boeuf au poivre. All of the traditional desserts characteristic, from île flottante to crêpes suzette flambées. It’s also possible to drop by for breakfast, cocktails from the Bar Américain, or a bit of one thing at l’heure de l’apéritif. Service is continu, so that you don’t have to stay to set meal occasions.
Seafood is a speciality, to eat in or to remove from the gorgeous ice-packed separate servery. A recent shellfish platter may swimsuit, or you could possibly order one of many tasting platters the place the provenance of three various kinds of oyster is specified.
Alternatively, you could possibly go for lobster, for langoustines, crab or clams. Or simply sit and watch the dramatic arrival of orders for different tables. Beds of ice, wedges of lemon, giant show platters of glass or shiny steel, all is designed to intensify the curiosity.
Sure, it’s a enterprise. The waiters are stated to cowl 10km on every shift and the restaurant wants 650 covers a day to interrupt even. However it’s a really Parisian enterprise, steeped within the glamour of les Années Folles, simply the place to savor the brasserie ambiance for which the town is famed. You could possibly attempt one of many Dancing de la Coupole evenings, the place you’ll be able to get pleasure from a mixture of burlesque, dwell music and dancing. Or guide a desk and, following the writer Stephen Clarke’s recommendation, order “a few dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne.” Or take mine and go to on any weekday between 12 and 4 when the set menu prices €19.50. That buys you two programs, plus the possibility to linger on the terrace and faux you’re eavesdropping on Ernest Hemingway on the subsequent desk.
DETAILS
La Coupole
102 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 14th arrondissement
Tel: +33 (0)1 43 20 14 20
Bookings could be made straight on the web site.
Open Monday- Sunday from 8 A.M. to midnight.
Lead photograph credit score : The outside of La Coupole. Picture credit score: Marian Jones
