It’s easy to adjust to Palace life at Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris

by Bridget Williams / photos courtesy of Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris

"These days, you eat with your phone first," said pastry chef and entrepreneur Yazid Ichemrahen during a tasting of his sweetest hits at Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris, where he was recently tapped to lead the pastry and dessert program. With 1.6 million Instagram followers, the thirty-something, who, at the tender age of 22, became the youngest chef to be named a World Pastry Champion, knows a thing or two about appealing visuals, backed up by a unique approach that's lighter on sugar and heavy on raw ingredients. "By adhering to a single rule – no more than three ingredients and three textures in any single dessert – a recipe for happiness emerges," said Ichemrahen.

Under Ichemrahen's direction, the dessert course at each of Le Royal Monceau's dining outposts becomes an event, with a member of the pastry team finishing off creations tableside. This elevation brings the last course up to par with first impressions upon entering the whimsical and wonderful Palace Hotel, located in Paris' 8th arrondissement. While just a stone's throw from the Arc de Triomphe, the hotel feels worlds away within a chic residential area notable for the charming Parc Monceau (established three years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence).

Terrifically theatrical and taking cues from the 1940s and onwards, the Philippe Starck-orchestrated interiors in public spaces and the 149 guestrooms and suites are heavily focused on contemporary art and mirrored surfaces, with generous helpings of crystal, application of grand scale, and the unexpected, such as the trippy floor-to-ceiling stripes in the guest room corridors. A product of the roaring Twenties, Le Royal Monceau retains the vanguard spirit of the era, with halls once roamed by Josephine Baker and Ernest Hemingway reimagined by Starck, a Parisian native, through a lens of contemporary joie de vivre. 

The lobby's monumental staircase, with walls sheathed in mirrors, is reminiscent of Coco Chanel's famed escalier connecting her second-floor apartment at 31 Rue Cambo with her Maison below. An installation of massive crystal chandeliers, part of the hotel's inventory since it opened and hung at varying heights, amplifies the drama. The first time I took the stairs up to my room, I was caught off guard by Russian artist Nikolay Polissky's installation of 15 life-sized wooden elk and deer arrayed on the first landing.

Views from the dormer windows of my 7th-floor junior suite framed what I fancied as my ideal dream apartment, complete with a terrace, on the same floor in a Hausmann building across the street. My suite's interior was a beguiling mix of blonde wood paneling, camel-colored leather furniture, and otherworldly blown glass sconces and table lamps (including one with a purposely off-kilter shade that I tried to straighten more than once). While Versailles has its hall of mirrors, I enjoyed the funhouse effect created by a fully mirrored closet and bathroom. Perfect natural light projectors, leaning floor mirrors at either end of the room concealed televisions. Hung next to the bed in every room is a copy of a different love letter culled from the hundreds Jean Cocteau wrote to his beloved Jeannot (Jean Marais).

Hoping to refresh my jet-lagged complexion, I headed straight to the Clarins & myBlend Spa shortly after check-in for ninety minutes of pure bliss via a myBlend facial. The indulgent treatment included donning a MyLedMask (which, showing my age, made me think of Billy Joel's The Stranger album cover). I returned to the spa facilities several times during my stay to sweat it out in the hammam, sauna, and sprawling fitness center, spread out over four rooms and encompassing a private Thai Boxing studio and one room entirely dedicated to Pilates with the latest Reformer and Cadillac machines.

The hotel's Le Bar Long is the spot for an elevated apéro among the local chic set. Starck conceived the illuminated long bar to switch up the repetitive face-to-face layout between patrons and a bartender moving behind a bar. A nearby smoking room, dramatically rendered in red from floor to ceiling, is said to represent Starck's vision of hell (which is far chicer than I would have imagined).

While it may be in the city's heart, Le Royal Monceau's culinary program pulls from a global playbook, partnering with some of the world's most famous chefs for its fine dining experiences. Matsuhisa Paris is Chef Nobu Matsuhisa's first Matsuhisa restaurant in France. In the high-ceilinged space, dome pendant lights, nearly the diameter of the round tables below, ring the perimeter. Stéphane Calais' fresco mural, Jardin à la Française, adorns the ceiling. During breakfast, the same space becomes La Cuisine, where chef Norihisa Semboshi presides over a sumptuous breakfast buffet that takes it up a notch during Royal Sunday Brunch, an impressive display of global cuisine and French supremacy in the pastry arts.

It's hard to imagine the painstaking hours it took for craftsman Thomas Boog to create the fresco of hand-glued shells on the walls within Il Carpaccio. The main dining room, set within a greenhouse space framed by a manicured garden, is a feast for the senses even before the first plate arrives. Within six months of reopening in 2022, the restaurant, a collaboration with the three-star Da Vittorio in Lombardy, Italy, and chefs Oliver Piras and Alessandra Del Favero, received a Michelin Star. Put your experience in the hands of the chef and sommelier for their six-course tasting menu and thank me later.

My visit this past spring was a tad too early to enjoy the leafy respite offered by the courtyard of La Terrasse, where tables from Matsuhisa Paris and Il Carpaccio spill out into the garden. At the center, a clear-bottomed cocktail pool provides a glimpse of swimmers in the subterranean spa pool, one of the largest indoor pools in the city. 

In a city with no shortage of luxury hotels, Le Royal Monceau differentiates itself from its peers with scores of unique guest experiences. Paramount among these is a dedicated, in-house Art Concierge, a world first in a luxury hotel, who can devise custom art-centric itineraries and tailored visits of the hotel's private collection, comprised of more than 300 pieces. 

Rain scuttled plans for "Fleur Royale," a plein-air watercolor experience with Mireille Blanc and Eva Nielsen, professional artists and instructors at the Académie des Beaux-arts, so the concierge pivoted and moved us as close to the outdoors as possible without getting wet: the dining room at Il Carpaccio. Despite none of us in our group having an artistic background, supportive guidance from the instructors and a bit of liquid encouragement had us creating mini masterpieces that became a highly personal souvenir.  

A port tasting with Italian-born sommelier Gabriele Del Carlo in the living room of the Ray Charles suite is one of many unique food and beverage experiences available to Le Royal Monceau guests. Charles and Arlette Kotchounian, his French paramour photographer, were Le Royal Monceau regulars. Kotchounian's photographs of the couple during their visits add an aura of intimacy to the suite, a repository for Paris' only in-suite Pleyel grand piano (a professional pianist can be booked upon request).  

Del Carlo, named Italy's best sommelier in 2011 and 2017, has facilitated a $1 million investment in expanding the wine list since his arrival. His focus on Vintage Port is unique in the city; Le Royal Monceau is the only hotel offering Quinta do Noval Nacional Vintage Port by the glass, an experience Del Carlo likens to being able to buy a single pour of Burgundy's Romanée-Conti. 

During a dessert demonstration with Ichemrahen, a trio of simple but very high-quality ingredients, including chocolate sourced from Vietnam, seemed to magically coalesce into the most decadent mousse. As Ichemrahen deftly turned the spatula, we gleaned some insight into why this contemporary culinary luminary finds a kindred spirit in a nearly one-hundred-year-old palace hotel: "We have a similar mindset, focused on luxury and forward-thinking," he said.

For more information about Le Royal Monceau – Raffles Paris visit leroyalmonceau.com.

 Side Bar

Do: Before a special night out, take a short stroll across the street from the Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris to Patrick & Marcel Coiffure (6 Rue Dupont des Loges) for a "brushing," the French term for a blowout. The fabulously coiffed duo recently posted their red-carpet pics from the Cannes Film Festival on their Instagram account, @patrickandmarcel.

Eat: For an authentic French brasserie experience without pretense, head to Le Bon Georges in the 9th arrondissement (lebongeorges.paris)

Maxim's de Paris (restaurant-maxims.com), founded in 1893, enjoyed a long run at the pinnacle of fashionable restaurants. When I last visited in 2016, the shine on its famous Art Deco interiors has dimmed, with unenthusiastic staff delivering an expensively underwhelming experience. The landmark's new owners unveiled a refreshed Maxim’s earlier this year, and its new hauteness lived up to the hype, with palpable energy, a preponderance of leggy models seated around the tables, live music, and solid classic French cuisine.

See: Surrealism: The Centenary Exhibition – Center Pompidou (centrepompidou.fr/en/)

The centenary exhibition, centering around poet André Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism, published in 1924 and on loan from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, brings together works by Surrealism's leading artists, such as Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Dorothea Tanning, Tatsuo Ikeda, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Helen Lundeberg, and Joan Miro.