Ducasse Baccarat – dinner beneath a crystal sky

On the first floor of a mansion raised in 1895 on Place des États-Unis, crystal seems to fall gently from the ceiling. Ducasse Baccarat occupies the historic townhouse known as the Hôtel Bischoffsheim, or Hôtel de Noailles, built that year on a quiet square off Avenue d'Iéna. For decades it was the private address of the art patron Marie-Laure de Noailles, whose parties through the 1920s drew Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Picabia, Balthus and Dalí through its doors. Baccarat later made the mansion its Paris showroom, and in September 2024 Alain Ducasse opened a new gastronomic restaurant on its first floor, working alongside chef Christophe Saintagne and, more recently, chef Florian Gravelle. In 2025 the room was crowned the most beautiful restaurant in the world by the Prix Versailles, the global architecture and design prize. It is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a rare instance of architecture and cooking drawing equal attention.

01The room and the setting

The townhouse itself long predates Baccarat. Known as the Hôtel Bischoffsheim, or Hôtel de Noailles, it was built in 1895 on Place des États-Unis. From 1920 until her death in 1970, it was the private address of Marie-Laure de Noailles, the art patron whose costumed balls drew Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Picabia, Balthus and Dalí through its doors.

Baccarat acquired the mansion in 2003 and ran it for two decades as a showroom, a crystal museum decorated by Philippe Starck, and a café called the Cristal Room. That era ended in 2024: the museum closed, the café was retired, and in its place Alain Ducasse opened an entirely new restaurant on the mansion's first floor, replacing the old Cristal Room on the same site.

The new dining room, designed by Aliénor Béchu and her studio Volume ABC, plays at being a cabinet of curiosities: raw-oak screens by the sculptor Jean-Guillaume Mathiaut line walls set beneath a ceiling where an original painted fresco meets outsized, hand-blown Baccarat crystal raindrops, each one casting its own shifting shadow across the tables. It was this room, as much as the cooking, that won Ducasse Baccarat the title of most beautiful restaurant in the world at the Prix Versailles 2025, ahead of Dubai's Gerbou and Smoked Room and Shanghai's Ortensia, and succeeding New York's Ilia as titleholder.

02The chef

Alain Ducasse, born in 1956 on a farm in the Landes, set the project's culinary direction. Day to day, though, the kitchen answers to two further names. Christophe Saintagne ran Ducasse's three-starred kitchens at Le Meurice between 2013 and 2016 and at Plaza Athénée from 2010 to 2013, then built his own following at Papillon in the 17th arrondissement from 2016 to 2022; he now acts as the house's consulting chef.

Insider tip

Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner, Sunday for brunch; métro Boissière or Iéna

It is Florian Gravelle who signs the day-to-day menu: a former teaching chef at the École Ducasse who already worked alongside Saintagne at the Plaza Athénée between 2010 and 2012, and who has spent roughly half his career inside Ducasse's own kitchens.

03The cooking

At the stove, the style is French classicism lit by the Mediterranean: vegetables, acidity, bitterness and the scents of the Riviera brought in to give movement to a technique built on precise cooking, close attention to sauces and a direct relationship with the ingredient. A dish such as the Jardin de Provence sets the tone early: raw marinated courgette with taggiasche olives, toasted pine nuts and a tomato-and-pepper sorbet, sunlit rather than rich.

04What to order

The à la carte runs at both lunch and dinner, alongside three set menus: a lunch-only Menu déjeuner at 90€ per person, a Menu Cristal at 180€ served at both services, and the fullest Menu Expérience Alain Ducasse at 240€. Beyond the Jardin de Provence, look for the Homard bleu, blanc, rose, a lobster course in shades of blue, white and pink that Ducasse designed himself, drawing on pieces from his own Baccarat tableware collection, and for a crisp, crunchy oyster course that opens the meal with the same visual nerve. Both dishes, along with the Jardin de Provence, are named among the house's signatures.

05Wine and drinks

The cellar runs to a programme called Signatures: twelve wines poured by the glass, by carafe, or as a tasting flight. The full list arrives bound in red Umbrian leather, ranging from the reasoned to the frankly extravagant. One floor away, the bar Midi-Minuit keeps its own clock, open every day from noon until midnight, pouring cocktails and wine through lunch, afternoon and dinner.

06When to go and booking

The restaurant seats lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday, from noon to 1.30pm and 7.30pm to 9.30pm, with a Sunday brunch running from noon to 2pm. Between 2 May and 27 September, the ground-floor Le Jardin opens too: a planted terrace designed by the landscape architect Jérémie Attali, described by the house itself as the most secret terrace in Paris. For private events, the mansion's eighteenth-century ballroom, with its Versailles-grade boiserie, can be hired in full, along with the rest of the house. Ducasse Baccarat stands on Place des États-Unis in the 16th arrondissement, a few steps off Avenue d'Iéna; the nearest métro stations are Boissière, on line 6, and Iéna, on line 9.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.