L'Arôme – the last innkeeper of the Champs-Élysées

L'Arôme sits three streets back from the Champs-Élysées, inside the wedge of the 8th arrondissement known as the Triangle d'Or, bounded by avenues Montaigne, Champs-Élysées and George-V and home to the city's wealthiest families and grandest luxury houses. Restaurateur Eric Martins, who had trained through Maxim's, Ledoyen, Lucas Carton, Seize au Seize and Hélène Darroze, opened the restaurant in November 2006, two years after launching his own bistro, L'Ami Marcel, in the 15th arrondissement. The following year he handed the stoves to a chef from Sologne, Thomas Boullault, who took the reins of L'Arôme in 2007 at the age of twenty-eight, and two years later Boullault had won the house its first MICHELIN Star. It holds one MICHELIN Star today, within the guide's higher 'Spare no expense' price bracket. Boullault went on to buy the restaurant outright in 2019, and still works the dining room table by table most services, reading what each guest wants before it is ordered.

01The room and the setting

In 2020 the dining room was redecorated under interior designer Emma Roux, wrapping the space in intimate, golden-brown tones while leaving the kitchen open so that guests can watch the chef and his brigade at work on each course. The original decoration, when Martins first opened the address in 2006, had been handed to Valérie Serin, a former collaborator of designer Jacques Garcia — a lineage of considered decorating that explains why the room reads as polished rather than merely fashionable.

For private events, L'Arôme keeps a separate room, the Salon Saint-Honoré, reached via a few steps past the wine cellar and able to seat up to twelve guests.

02The chef

Before Sologne led him back to Paris, Boullault had cooked at La Tête de Lard in La Ferté-Imbault, at the starred Auberge de Lanthenay in Romorantin, at the George V and at the Royal Monceau, working under Philippe Legendre at the George V. Born into a family where food was central — his father was a pork butcher who cooked for local celebrities — Boullault discovered the trade young. He likes to describe himself, half in jest, as the last innkeeper of Paris.

Insider tip

Closed weekends; valet parking; Métro Saint-Philippe-du-Roule or Miromesnil.

Behind him in the kitchen is his loyal second, Jérôme, who runs the stove with a rigour that frees Boullault to work the room. He is also the instigator of the Championnat du Monde du Lièvre à la Royale, a competition built around the Sologne hare dish he considers a pinnacle of classic French cooking.

03The cooking

The cooking at L'Arôme is precise to the point of being exacting, built on classical bases, generous sauces and well-reduced jus, yet still capable of surprising with its daring. Produce drives the menu: ultra-fresh langoustines, cracked crab, oversized razor clams, carefully sourced meats, fish killed by the Japanese ikejime method that changes its texture, vegetables delivered daily from the chef's own kitchen garden an hour outside Paris, and seasonal wild mushrooms such as morels, ceps and black truffle.

The restaurant was quickly awarded its star after Boullault put the emphasis on respecting the seasons and the quality of each ingredient, and among his long-running dishes are smoked potato with caviar and sweetbreads with truffle or morels, a classic he revisits as the seasons turn.

04What to order

The menu changes with the seasons, but a handful of dishes recur. The pressé de tourteau breton — a pressed Breton crab terrine — is the house's signature starter, served with avocado hass, koshihikari rice and a tomato water spiced with smoked La Vera pepper. The surf-and-turf of blue lobster and Black Angus beef comes with lobster-claw ravioli, while scallops are paired with white truffle and bird's-tongue pasta.

Razor clams and smoked salmon arrive with a Dubarry mousseline, and squid is seared with Tandoori spice. Smoked potato with caviar and a tangy double cream turns up as a cold-weather opener, and the kitchen's airy hot soufflé is the dessert regulars ask for by name.

05Wine and drinks

Owner Eric Martins kept a strong passion for pairing food and wine from his five years working alongside chef Alain Senderens, and the cellar he built holds both essential vintages and more obscure bottles hunted out specifically to match Boullault's cooking. Day to day it is looked after by sommelier Bixente Aguerre, continuing a line of in-house sommeliers that has run through Renaud Laurent and Eole Hodgkinson over the years.

06The neighbourhood

L'Arôme trades on its address: tucked off the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a short walk from the Élysée Palace, it sits among the palace hotels of the Golden Triangle, and counts among its regulars guests who are staying nearby but want a dinner away from their own hotel dining rooms. The MICHELIN Guide first recognised the table in March 2009, at the guide's hundredth edition, and L'Arôme has kept its single star in every edition since.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.