Grands Boulevards Experimental – Passerini's Italy under glass

Down a passage off boulevard Poissonnière, in the 2nd arrondissement between the Opéra Garnier and the edge of the Marais, Restaurant Grands Boulevards Experimental occupies a courtyard built on the foundations of a private garden, erected in the years just before the French Revolution. Its kitchen has built a following well beyond the hotel's own guests, serving beneath a glass roof broad enough to shelter full-grown palms. At the stove is Giovanni Passerini, the Rome-born chef who studied finance before turning to cooking, trained under Alain Passard and Inaki Aizpitarte in Paris, and opened his cult bistro Rino in 2010, before launching his own trattoria behind Bastille and being named Best Chef by the Le Fooding guide in 2017. At Grands Boulevards, his menu folds Italian cooking through a French lens, built from seasonal produce chosen from small growers. The restaurant is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, and the hotel that houses it carries its own distinction: one MICHELIN Key.

01The room and the setting

The building long predates the kitchen. It was erected on the foundations of that private garden just before the Revolution, then lived several lives — first as offices and bourgeois apartments in the style of early twentieth-century Paris, then, in the 1920s, as a cinema, a conversion that is how the courtyard's patio came to exist. Designer Dorothée Meilichzon reworked the whole address for the Experimental Group, setting the restaurant inside that eighteenth-century shell under a sweeping glass roof, with two cocktail bars built into the plan.

Meilichzon's courtyard plays on the memory of that garden: terracotta, trellis, fountains and statues break up the sightlines, set against forest-green and earthen tones. In summer the glass roof retracts fully, so dinner is eaten more or less outdoors; in winter it closes over a room that feels closer to a conservatory, with palm fronds at the windows and a curved bar built into its centre.

02The chef

Giovanni Passerini studied finance in Rome before turning to cooking, training first at a bistro called Uno e Bino in the San Lorenzo district. He moved to Paris to work under Alain Passard and Inaki Aizpitarte, then as second to Peter Nilsson at La Gazzetta, before opening his own address, Rino, in 2010 — a tiny room where he revisited Italian gastronomy using French ingredients.

Insider tip

Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner nightly; Sunday brunch €45 (Oct 2026); book via the hotel's own site.

After Rino closed, Passerini opened his own trattoria on rue Traversière behind Bastille, in a space Paris's food writers still treat as a pilgrimage point; he was named Best Chef by the Le Fooding guide in 2017. At Grands Boulevards, the Experimental Group counts him among the chefs who have come to define Paris's new wave of bistros and brasseries, his cooking built on respect for ingredients sourced from small local and Italian producers.

03The cooking

The kitchen works from local and seasonal produce rather than imported luxury, reading Italian classics through a French pantry. Past cards have carried Passerini's own trippa alla romana — beef tripe with pecorino and fresh mint — alongside a green asparagus tartlet lifted with roasted sesame, fine Italian charcuterie, and an artichoke broth poured over gnudi, those small balls of ricotta, parmesan, semolina and spinach. Pasta has run to fusilli with duck ragù from Challans, tarragon, olives and parmesan, and mains to a monkfish tail with a piquillo-basil emulsion, broccoli shoots and guanciale.

04What to order

Beyond the seasonal card, Sunday brings a brunch loosely styled on a New York weekend: fresh pastries and breads to start, then a seasonal salad, beef tataki or gravlax, pancakes, avocado toast, eggs, a granola bowl and mini pastries to finish. It runs from midday to half past two and was priced at forty-five euros when read in October 2026.

05Wine and drinks

Two bars carry the evening on past dinner. The Shell, tucked off the lobby and built around a vast eighteenth-century-style shell motif, opens only from October to April. The Shed, on the roof, runs through the year, pouring cocktails over the rooftops of the Second Arrondissement.

06When to go and booking

Breakfast starts at seven; lunch runs Monday to Saturday from midday to half past two; dinner is served nightly, Sunday to Wednesday until half past ten and Thursday to Saturday until eleven. Tea is poured every afternoon between three and six. Tables can be booked through the hotel's own site or by telephone, read in October 2026.

07The neighbourhood

Grands Boulevards Experimental sits between the historic Bourse district and the fashion workrooms of Sentier, a few steps from Strasbourg-Saint-Denis. The nearest métro stop, Grands Boulevards, sits right in front of the hotel's gated entrance. From the door it is a short walk to the Opéra Garnier, the Palais Royal and the edge of the Marais.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.