Les Ambassadeurs (restaurant)

For other uses, see Les Ambassadeurs.

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.

Les Ambassadeurs
Restaurant information
Closed	2013
City	Paris
Country	France

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 known as the Café des Ambassadeurs) 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 artists like Eugénie Fougère 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 [fr] followed by Jean-François Piège^[4][5] and finally when the hotel closed in 2013 for an extended renovation, Christopher Hache [fr].^[6]

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