Lapérouse, the restaurant on quai des Grands-Augustins since 1766

Lapérouse, a restaurant on quai des Grands-Augustins, was born in 1766, when Lefèvre, lemonade seller to the king, bought a mansion once owned by the Comte de Bruillevert. At first a wine shop, the house prospered with the Vallée poultry market, opened opposite in 1812, and fitted discreet rooms upstairs.

Around 1850 Jules Lapérouse gave the house his name and decorated the small rooms with paintings and mirrors. Maupassant, Zola, Hugo, Offenbach, Rodin and Sarah Bernhardt dined here; courtesans scratched the mirrors with their diamonds to test them. Later came Proust, Cocteau, Sartre, Camus and Emperor Hirohito.

Three generations of the Topolinski family ran the house in the twentieth century; it won its third Michelin star in 1933 and lost it in 1969. Benjamin Patou took it over in 2018 and had the ten private rooms and the main dining room restored with Laura Gonzalez and Cordelia de Castellane.

On three floors facing the Seine, in the 6th arrondissement, the house keeps its private rooms where the waiter is summoned by a small bell, the Belle Otero room, L’Astrolabe and La Boussole, and a cellar of 12,000 bottles.