Le Pré Catelan, a restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne since 1905

Le Pré Catelan, a restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne, was born in 1905, when the City of Paris asked the architect Guillaume Tronchet for a luxury casino-restaurant. Inspired by eighteenth-century follies, the Belle Époque pavilion stretches beneath the trees; the casino never opened, the restaurant did.

The meadow takes its name from Théophile Catelan, master of the hunt to Louis XIV, or, by legend, from the troubadour Arnault Catelan. A quarry, then a pleasure garden until the war of 1870, it became under Léopold Mourier, owner of Fouquet’s, the most fashionable address in Paris from 1908. On his death in 1923, Charles Drouant took over.

In 1976 Colette and Gaston Lenôtre won the concession and restored the whole building, façades and gardens included. Frédéric Anton arrived in the kitchen in 1997 and earned a third Michelin star in 2007. The estate joined Sodexo in 2011, and Pierre-Yves Rochon redesigned the restaurant.

In the heart of the Bois de Boulogne, it brings together Frédéric Anton’s fine-dining restaurant, his bistro La Ferme du Pré, and reception rooms run by Lenôtre. The stone cross raised to the troubadour still stands at the entrance to the grounds.