For a few moments, I feel as if my fantasy world has collapsed. But then I realize that this doesn’t really matter at all.
‘Your customers are still mainly lovers, though?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Lots of Parisians book it for their wedding anniversaries, or just for a romantic night alone without the kids. There are no TVs and no phones, so people can be together with no outside disturbances.’
So, in fact, it is still a love hotel, and a love hotel in the true sense of the word, a place more geared to amoureux than amants—the French, typically, have two words for lovers. Amants are people who have sex together, amoureux are those who are (also) in love. And in the Hôtel Amour’s rooms, you’re more likely to find amoureux enjoying some sexy romantic seclusion, secure in the knowledge that they don’t have to get dressed and back to the office an hour later. How much more romantic can you get?
Where to go for a verre
Pretty well any half-decent café or bar in Paris will be a great venue for a romantic drink. But if you want to make it very special, there’s only one place to go—the Ritz. A bit of a cliché, but like so many clichés, it is one because it’s so irresistibly true.
Even if you don’t care that this is the hotel where poor Princess Diana had her last drink before falling victim to a piece of spectacularly bad Parisian driving, the Ritz has just that level of effortless chic to make anyone feel a little bit royal. And anyone can go there. All you need to do is dress up a little (though a tie is not de rigueur) and wander in, saying a friendly bonsoir to the doorman and any staff you might meet, as if you have every right to be there. Which, of course, you do—all the bars in Paris’s posh hotels are public places where it is perfectly acceptable to drop in for a glass of wine or even a simple espresso if you just want to check out the décor and use the ultra-classy loos.
And surprisingly, a glass of the house Champagne at the bar du Ritz is actually pretty good value. It will be about double the price of a coupe in a normal restaurant, but you get so many bowls of excellent snacks—the most delicious roasted-nut mix in Paris, for example—that if you’re a light eater like me, afterwards you’ll hardly be able to manage dinner (not that you need to explain the economics of all this to your loved one, of course).
The bar itself is very snug, but as soon as the weather is warm enough, I like to sit outside in the garden amongst the kitsch sculptures and the parasols. The only problem is that this is a rich person’s hotel, and some rich people have to show how comfortably off they are by trying to asphyxiate everyone with a cigar-shaped tube of donkey droppings. But that is just a personal whinge, and even I am capable of pretending that I can breathe normally if it means preserving the romantic atmosphere that seems to come naturally when you combine luxurious surroundings with your loved one and a glass of chilled Champagne.
Oh, and one final thing. If you want to look as though you belong, it’s best to know where you’re going. The Ritz has several bars, but the one I’m talking about is very close to the entrance, almost immediately on the left as you go in. If in doubt, just ask, Où est le jardin?—preceded by a friendly bonsoir, of course.
The perfect Parisian dinner date
Paris is very good at serving up romantic restaurants, even if it doesn’t always realize it. Practically any decent restaurant has most of the necessary ingredients, although it probably won’t bill itself as a lovers’ retreat. Below are a couple of my favourites.
Braque’s brasserie
My first suggestion is a classic but, like the Ritz, no worse for that, because it is a quintessentially Parisian experience.
La Coupole, for me, is the best of the big Parisian brasseries. Not because the food is spectacular (except for the high-rise shellfish platters, which are a spectacle in themselves), but because Paris wouldn’t be the same without it. When it was announced that the building, in the heart of Montparnasse, might be pulled down, an old friend of mine was in a panic—‘Where will I go for my birthday dinner?’ he kept saying. ‘And where will I eat oysters at Christmas?’ He probably wasn’t the only Parisian saying that kind of thing, because people like Picasso, Braque and Édith Piaf used to be just as addicted to the place.
In the end, though, as mentioned in Chapter 5, the brasserie wasn’t demolished—it was simply covered over with a sort of concrete marquee—a few floors of apartments were built on top, leaving the restaurant intact, so that today it must look pretty well exactly as it did back in the 1920s. Except, of course, for the lack of smoke.
It’s a huge place, a football pitch of old brasserie benches, with racks behind your head to store your jacket and bag, saving space to cram more people in. But for some reason, the immensity of the salle de restaurant and the fact that you’re likely to dine elbow-to-elbow with strangers doesn’t detract from the romanticism. For a start, there’s no music and the high ceiling provides excellent acoustics, so you can actually hear what your conversation partner is saying without yelling or lip-reading. And the atmosphere is always cosy rather than cramped, with diners eyeing their neighbours’ plates as they decide what to order. The Art Deco murals on the thirty-odd columns help, too—they were painted by pupils of Matisse and Fernand Léger, and some of them depict rather suggestive scenes of semi-naked
