La Réserve Paris Hotel and Spa

Avenue Gabriel runs along the gardens of the Champs-Élysées, with the Élysée Palace on one side and the embassies on the other. At number 42, behind a facade of 1854, Michel Reybier opened La Réserve Paris Hotel and Spa in January 2015. With only 40 rooms it is the smallest of the capital's Palace hotels, and the one that most resembles a private house still in use.

History

The mansion was built in the 1850s during the Second Empire, in the years when the Duc de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III, was developing the quarter around the Champs-Élysées. In the twentieth century it served as offices, and for several decades it belonged to the couturier Pierre Cardin. Reybier, the Lyon-born businessman who owns Château Cos d'Estournel in Saint-Estèphe and had already created La Réserve in Geneva and Ramatuelle, bought it and spent two years on the conversion.

The hotel opened on 13 January 2015. In 2016 Atout France granted it the Palace distinction, the fastest award of the label to a new opening at that date. Le Gabriel gained two Michelin stars in 2016, a year after opening, and a third in the 2024 guide.

Architecture and design

Jacques Garcia, who had already done the Hôtel Costes and La Réserve Geneva for Reybier, designed the interiors. The brief was a Parisian hôtel particulier of the 1860s as its owner might have lived in it: deep reds and greens, mahogany, velvet, marble fireplaces, tasselled lamps and oil portraits. The ground-floor library and the smoking room are open to residents only. A staircase with a wrought-iron rail rises through the building, and a small inner courtyard brings daylight to the lower levels. Nothing in the public rooms reads as a hotel lobby; there is no front desk in the usual sense, and arriving guests are met by a butler.

Rooms and suites

There are 40 rooms and suites, 26 of them suites. The largest, on the upper floors, look over the gardens of the Champs-Élysées towards the Grand Palais and the Eiffel Tower, and a few on the top floor have terraces. Rooms are finished in silk wall coverings, parquet and marble bathrooms, with butler service on every floor. The hotel also runs a set of serviced apartments in a separate building on the Trocadéro, La Réserve Paris Apartments, for longer stays.

Dining

Le Gabriel is the main restaurant, in two intimate ground-floor rooms. Jérôme Banctel, formerly of the Senderens and Lasserre kitchens, has led it since the opening; his cooking combines French technique with Japanese seasoning and ingredients from Brittany and the hotel's own suppliers. The restaurant holds three Michelin stars. La Pagode de Cos, named after the pagoda at Cos d'Estournel, is the all-day brasserie and terrace, and the bar serves in the library and smoking room.

Wellness

The spa in the basement is run under the Nescens name, the Swiss anti-ageing clinic brand of the Reybier group, with treatment rooms, a hammam, a fitness room and a 16-metre indoor pool. Programmes designed by the Nescens clinic in Geneva are offered over several days.

Weddings and events

The house has no ballroom and no conference rooms. Private dinners, small board meetings and family celebrations are held in the salons, in a private dining room off Le Gabriel and, for the largest occasions, by privatising the restaurant. Weddings take place at the scale of a family gathering rather than a reception of hundreds; the hotel's size is the point.

Location

The hotel stands in the 8th arrondissement between the Place de la Concorde and the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées, on the garden side of the avenue. The Grand Palais and the Petit Palais are across the gardens, the avenue Montaigne is five minutes on foot, and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré a little more. Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau metro station on lines 1 and 13 is the nearest; Charles de Gaulle airport is about 45 minutes by car. Few luxury hotels in Paris sit this close to the Élysée Palace, which explains the discreet security on the avenue.