Hotel Bristol
Paris
Except for an occasional traffic jam caused by the limousines
clustered in front of the entrance, the Hotel Bristol might go
altogether unnoticed behind its discreet white facade on the
rué du Faubourg St. Honoré. The Bristol does not shout;
nothing is ostentatious about it. Everything is understated and quite
luxurious: polished white Carrara marble floors, Baccarat crystal
chandeliers, Savonnerie rugs in muted green and royal blue,
eighteenth-century Gobelin tapestries on the walls, Louis XVI sofas
and armchairs upholstered in velvet and silk brocade.
After a four-year renovation completed last year, the Bristol's 195
rooms provide the additional luxury of space, rare even in the most
palatial of Paris hotels; a deluxe double here is more like a junior
suite elsewhere--and so on up the scale to the apartment suites, each
with an immense, California-style terrace (1,100 and 1,600 square
feet, respectively) overlooking the garden. The rooms are done in
quiet colors and lush fabrics, with just a few carefully chosen
antique furnishings and much attention to detail: good reading lamps,
plenty of wooden hangers in well-lighted closets. The truly large
bathrooms are floor-to-ceiling pale marble, each with king-sized tub
and separate stall shower, double-band basins, bathrobes, slippers,
hair dryers and Hermés toiletries. Each also has a magnifying
makeup/shaving mirror with interior light, said to have been invented
by the hotel's founder, Hippolyte Jammet.
Built over an eighteenth-century mansion, the Bristol opened in
1924. The original building, just behind the presidential
Elysée Palace, was once the residence of Madame de Pompadour;
her private theater, an exquisite oval room with carved oak paneling
and a milky-white domed skylight, is now the hotel's winter
restaurant. In summer, the restaurant moves to the glass-walled
conservatory overlooking the hotel's remarkable 13,000 sq.-ft. garden,
complete with colonnade, manicured hedges, giant magnolia trees and an
old stone fountain.
Summer or winter, the Michelin one-star restaurant has a 330 franc
(approximately $65) fixed priced menu (at lunch and dinner) as
well as the seasonal--and suitably pricey--á la carte cuisine
of Chef Emile Tabourdiau: sea bass carpaccio with herbs, langoustine
salad with avocado mousse and crab dressing, open lobster ravioli with
sweet peppers and caramelized tomatoes, truffle omelet, roast Barbary
duck with ginger, spicy poached peaches with a Champagne and saffron
sabayon, dark-chocolate and pistachio ice cream with coconut-rum
sauce. There are perhaps a few too many dishes of innards for American
taste (veal kidneys, sweetbreads, tête de veau) but there are
enough other choices to compensate. The wine cellar, with 31,000
bottles, is reputedly one of the best in the country. Cigars are
permitted in both dining rooms, and the hotel's own humidor offers
Montecristo, Cohiba, Punch and Davidoff (Dominican) No. 2.
The rooftop indoor swimming pool, teak-decked like an ocean liner, was
designed by the naval architect who produced yachts for Niarchos and
Onassis. At one end a trompe-l'oeil wall mural expands the "view,"
with straw-hatted figures promenading on the prow of a ship plowing
through the blue sea toward Cap d'Antibes; bay windows on both sides
have a more terrestrial outlook over the city skyline, as does the new
fitness center--small, but outfitted with computerized exercise
equipment, sauna and personal trainer or massage on demand.
With a staff-guest ratio of two to one, the Bristol has long been
celebrated for its service--fast, attentive, unobtrusive and, of
course, discreet. About the only complaint ever made is that the hotel
is almost too perfect and thus a little cold and impersonal, but it
seems precisely that impeccability that attracts the high-powered
business executives, statesmen and celebrities who have always been
its regular clientele, from Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle to
Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Marilyn Monroe.
-- Judy Fayard is a writer who makes her home in Paris.
Hotel Bristol
112 r. Faubourg St. Honoré
Phone:
33(1)42669145
Room Rates: about $500 to $720; suite: $1,620
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