Avec plaisir! Five of the best bars for mixing business and fun in Paris
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
This article is part of a guide to Paris from FT Globetrotter
Mixing business and pleasure seems like an intrinsic trait in France — at least in a certain received idea of what makes the French so very much themselves. Even in less louche ways than that might suggest, the natural French propensity when doing business is more social than the more traditionally transactional Anglo-Saxon approach. There has long been a custom of generous entertaining expenses. That’s also because of an even more consummately French reflex: food and drink present natural opportunities for enjoyment and fineness — which also happen to be optimal lubricants for getting business done.
In any case, the idea of mixing business and pleasure is especially tempting in Paris — even if it’s on your own after the business of the day is done. As you watch the grandiose Haussmanian façades and boulevards stream by from the back of a taxi on your way in from the airport or the train station, or walk by bustling cafés with waistcoated waiters serving coffees or bubbly kirs, you’ll probably regret that you’re not here for a weekend of flânerie and bistro dining, or that you don’t have time to go back to that sumptuous restaurant where you once enjoyed an exquisite meal.
Fortunately for the business traveller in Paris for just a short stint, the sheer beauty of the city (and its endless amount of chic, intimate or grand venues) is that it’s the perfect place to easily — and quite professionally — lighten work with a bit of play. Even as work remains the focus and time is limited, it’s easy to enjoy a taste of the city of pleasure, if only for just a quick business drink or a power breakfast.
Here are a few of my favourite venues and experiences that allow you to optimise time, location, work and pleasure — whatever your order of those priorities.
Bar 8 at Mandarin Oriental
251 Rue St Honoré, 75001 Paris
Good for: Cocktails are reliably excellent, from the classics to the signatures, and the white-jacketed bartender-servers will take it upon themselves to make sure you’re enjoying your selection
Not so good for: Summertime drinks as the bar — especially the garden bar — can be overrun with high-end tourists in the holiday months
FYI: The bar food is banal but well executed for what it is
Bar 8 at the Mandarin Oriental is well located on the Rue Saint-Honoré near the Place Vendôme: very close to many of the offices and business hotels where the traveller is likely to be working and staying. But much better than the typical business-hotel bar, Bar 8 is both intimate and chic, with an uncharacteristically relaxed vibe in an elegantly designed interior with backlighting and modernist banquettes. It feels professional, but it also feels good, and you could pleasurably linger after your meeting to enjoy a second drink (they are flawless here) and the sense of partaking, on the fringes, in a bit of Parisian nightlife. Warm evenings are best spent alfresco in the lovely lush courtyard.
Jacques’ Bar at The Hoxton
30-32 Rue du Sentier, 75002 Paris
Good for: A relaxed catch-up with a colleague you’re glad to see
Not so good for: If you’re staying and working in the more typical business neighbourhoods of the 8th arrondissement, it’s a bit further afield than you may have time to stray
FYI: If you’re feeling peckish, skip the bar snacks and go downstairs to Rivié, the all-day brasserie on the ground floor of the Hoxton where the seats at the bar offer nice solo dining
In the Paris outpost of The Hoxton hotel, a grand converted 18th-century residence in the 2nd arrondissement, Jacques is just one of the venue’s beautiful and welcoming spaces for “bleasure”-style socialising. It’s billed as a speakeasy, but the bar is both cosy and infinitely more Parisian than the underground idea would suggest. You climb up to its first-floor location via a stunning original wood and wrought-iron staircase before entering through a closed door into a small space that feels like Parisian boudoir meets London members’ club library.
It has just half a dozen small tables and overstuffed velvet and leather chairs and sofas (so you should book ahead). The elegant table lamps, luxe retro wallpaper and polished wooden bar give it a sense of formality. It is also pleasantly quiet, allowing you to speak discreetly. The bartenders are impressive mixologists who will devise a bespoke drink to your tastes in the unlikely event you don’t find a cocktail that suits you on the menu (which includes a “10am Martini” if you’re feeling particularly ambitious at your morning meeting).
L’Escadrille at Le Fouquet’s
99 Avenue des Champs Elysées, 75008 Paris
Good for: Convenience and proximity to business neighbourhoods
Not so good for: The food, whether breakfast or dinner, is forgettable
FYI: It has a nice selection of mocktails, but if you’re going for booze, don’t mess around with the speciality cocktails, just stick to the classics — that’s what this place is about and they are excellent
Whether for a power breakfast, a light business lunch or early-evening drinks, L’Escadrille is all about the location. It occupies a grandiose corner of real estate, bang on the Champs Elysées just a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe, at the heart of the neighbourhood that is ground zero for dozens of business hotels and offices. The elegant and recently renovated Fouquet’s is likely to always be just a few minutes by foot or taxi to wherever it is you need to go next.
Inside, with shiny black tables, velvet chairs, and polished wood panelling, the atmosphere is classic and business-like in a space small enough that, evening descending and your work concluding, it can feel intimate and warm enough to want to linger in the glow of the gleaming zinc bar. There are no beautiful Parisians hanging out here, but the hotel’s international clientele and a decor of photo portraits of the world’s great aviators lend a little flavour of Casablanca mystique.
Café Beaubourg
43 Rue Saint Merri, 75004 Paris
Good for: Lingering unbothered in off-meal hours after a meeting and need good WiFi and a calm place to catch up on emails
Not so good for: That vintage, marble-table-top-and-cobblestone street-café experience, but that’ll be for when you return for real pleasure
FYI: You’re also perfectly located for easy access to anywhere afterwards — just across the Seine for a jaunt in the Latin Quarter or a nightcap in Saint Germain des Prés (or at Jacques’ Bar)
It’s not Paris if you don’t go to a café at some point, whether for a morning coffee and croissant or a glass of wine at apéritif hour — and both quintessentially Parisian rituals graciously lend themselves to blending with business. Café Beaubourg is a modernised version of the classic café experience, and an ideal hybrid venue for a “bleasure” experience. Centrally located near the Centre Pompidou, which houses the National Museum of Modern Art, it is part of the small Costes empire of fashionable restaurants and cafés, though the vibe is more established than trendy.
Designed by French architect Christian de Portzamparc (known for chic buildings such as the LVMH Tower in New York), its interior is a stylish take on a classic Parisian aesthetic. Abundant alcoves and nooks lend themselves to discretion if you need that, and the larger tables offer space to spread out papers (and even a stray plug or two if you need to recharge a laptop or phone). As part of the Costes experience, you receive the welcome — and fab people-watching — of a higher-end venue. You can even add culture to your bleasure here — the National Museum of Modern Art is open every day except Tuesdays until 9pm, so you can easily cross the esplanade out front for some after-drinks art.
Madame Rêve Café
Cour Gutenberg, madame reve hotel, 48 rue du Louvre, 75001 Paris
Good for: A multiple-choice range of options that could easily take you from a business meeting at a discreet corner table in the Café, to a solo spritz on the rooftop to watch the sun go down, to a stiffer pre-dinner cocktail with people-watching at La Plume bar and, well, why not stay for dinner?
Not so good: Capped expenses. The experience and the prices are those of a luxury hotel
FYI: Spaces this large and diverse are rare in Paris and, perhaps fittingly, the late-19th-century grandiosity and wrought-iron details of the Café actually feel quite . . . Londonian. But the views from the upper floors are literally the cliché of the Parisian postcard
The eight-metre ceilings, the chunky Chesterfield-style bar stools, the choice between intimate clusters of lounge chairs or marble-topped café table for two — no matter whom you’re meeting, what your business is or if your business is thankfully done for the day, the Madame Rêve hotel gives you a choice of any number of deluxe-feeling experiences. And this is just the voluminous Café space on the ground floor (that also features a casual restaurant with excellent Mediterranean food). There is another, smaller but sleeker carved-marble bar upstairs that opens in the evenings, connected to the high-end La Plume restaurant serving Japanese-inspired food and stunning panoramic views.
The ultimate experience, though, is the outdoor rooftop: a vast, lushly planted space with 250 seats stretched comfortably around several sides of the enormous building, and your choice of stunning views across central Paris with monuments in the distance. The hotel opened in October (the rooftop opens in April), the product of a years-long renovation project to remake a post office dating from the 1880s. There is no other space quite like this one in Paris yet, certainly not in this central a location: just a few minutes on foot from the Louvre, and a few minutes by taxi to the offices and business hotels of the adjacent 8th arrondissement.
Which Paris bars do you like to mix business and pleasure in? Share them in the comments
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