Le Clarence – where a First Growth family sets the Paris table

On the lower Champs-Élysées, behind an unmarked façade, Le Clarence occupies a private mansion built in 1884 by the architect Henri Parent, who also designed the Musée Jacquemart-André. The house is the Paris showcase of Domaine Clarence Dillon, the family company that has owned Château Haut-Brion since 1935, when the New York banker Clarence Dillon bought the Bordeaux estate. It was restored by his great-grandson, Prince Robert of Luxembourg, who chairs the company today. The restaurant opened its doors on 17 November 2015 and has held Two MICHELIN Stars since 2017. Since September 2025 the kitchen has been run by chef Andrea Capasso, who succeeds Christophe Pelé, in place since the opening. Behind the quiet of its gilded salons, Le Clarence remains one of the few tables in Paris where a First Growth's own family sets the menu, pours the wine and signs the bill.

01The room and the setting

Chatillon Architectes led the restoration, and their survey of the building uncovered grand volumes and delicate late-19th-century plasterwork that decades of partitioning had hidden beneath false ceilings and added walls. Wood panelling, period paintings and jewel-toned fabrics now furnish the rooms, giving the house the feel of a private residence rather than a restaurant.

Upstairs, three salons are named for figures bound to the house's history – Antonin Carême, Auguste Escoffier and Seymour Weller, the first president of Domaine Clarence Dillon – and two of them look directly onto the Grand Palais. The dining room itself is split across three spaces seating roughly thirty-five to forty guests, a few steps from the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées at the centre of the Golden Triangle.

02The chef

Andrea Capasso is Italian by birth and Parisian at heart. He began cooking at fourteen and trained at ALMA, the school founded by Gualtiero Marchesi, studying the classics of French and Italian cuisine before refining his technique under his mentor Riccardo Camanini of Lido 84 in Italy. He has worked inside Le Clarence for six years, rising from the kitchen floor to Chef de Cuisine and then Executive Chef.

Insider tip

Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner; booking essential; elegant dress appreciated, children from 8.

The restaurant announced the end of its ten-year partnership with Christophe Pelé, who had led the kitchen since the opening and won its two stars in 2017, in the summer of 2025. Capasso, already Chef de Cuisine, was named his successor that September, bringing what the house describes as a disciplined creativity and a particular finesse in balancing land and sea.

03The cooking

There is no fixed menu at Le Clarence, only a run of dishes built around exceptional, strictly seasonal produce, reworked in sequences rather than courses. Each plate is designed to reveal several readings of a single ingredient, bound by a thread of fine acidity and delicate richness that runs through the meal.

Land-and-sea pairings remain the house signature, refined further under Capasso's direction, with the stated aim of restoring guests through emotion as much as technique – a style the kitchen frames less as spectacle than as sincerity.

04What to order

At lunch, Tuesday to Friday, there is a three-sequence menu at €150 per person, alongside a lunch carte. Across both services the Le Clarence menu runs to four sequences, at €250 for lunch and €280 for dinner, while the Inspiration menu extends to six sequences, priced at €380 for lunch and €430 for dinner.

05Wine and drinks

The cellar is one of the largest in any Paris restaurant, holding more than 1,500 references from over 500 winemakers, with rare vintages of the Domaine Clarence Dillon estates – Haut-Brion, La Mission Haut-Brion and Quintus – given pride of place. Château Haut-Brion itself is a 1855 Premier Grand Cru Classé, the wine that first drew Clarence Dillon to Bordeaux.

Head sommelier Cyril Bossard arrived with more than twelve years inside the Oetker Hotels group, including a recent posting as Head Sommelier at Eden Rock–St Barths after time at Le Bristol Paris. Wine pairings run alongside both menu styles: from €110 per person for the three-sequence lunch and €140 for the four-sequence menu on the 'Clarence' list, rising to €390 and upward for the more exploratory 'Inspiration' pairings.

06When to go and booking

Le Clarence keeps the rhythm of a private house rather than a brasserie: service runs lunch and dinner, Tuesday to Saturday, and tables at this level of the Paris scene are worth securing well ahead. Cancelling with less than twenty-four hours' notice brings a charge of €150 per person at lunch and €250 at dinner. There is no imposed dress code, though elegant dress is appreciated, and children are welcomed from the age of eight – there is no children's menu.

The nearest métro stations are Franklin D. Roosevelt and Champs-Élysées–Clemenceau, with the closest public car park at the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées. Outside, the address keeps grand company: Laurent and Ledoyen stand close by, near the site of the former Lasserre, in a stretch of the 8th arrondissement now enjoying a renewed wave of gastronomic attention.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.