La Grande Table Du Plaza Athénée: Where Haute Couture Meets The Art Of French Grand Dining

Paris, 1913. The Avenue Montaigne is still discovering the destiny that will make it synonymous with fashion, desire and beautifully orchestrated excess. 

Into this elegant new world comes the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, designed by architect Charles Lefebvre and officially opened on 20 April that year. From the beginning, the house possessed an instinct for glamour — a sensibility that would become inseparable from Parisian couture and the rituals of the grand hotel. 

More than a century later, the Plaza Athénée remains one of those rare Parisian addresses where history does not feel preserved behind glass; it feels alive. Its crimson awnings and famous red geraniums have become visual signatures of the house, while its position on avenue Montaigne places it quite literally at the heart of Parisian haute couture. 

The hotel’s relationship with fashion deepened spectacularly when Christian Dior opened his first boutique at 30 avenue Montaigne in 1947, establishing an enduring dialogue between the two addresses.

Then there is the glamour of the guests. Rudolph Valentino, Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy and Marlene Dietrich are among the celebrated names associated with the hotel over the decades, while Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton famously spent six months at the Plaza Athénée in 1971.  

It is precisely this accumulation of stories — fashion, cinema, romance, gastronomy and society — that gives the hotel its particularly intoxicating sense of place.

The culinary chapter is no less illustrious. In 1936, Le Relais Plaza opened, its pioneering Art Deco interior by Constant Lefranc inspired by the first-class dining room of the legendary SS Normandie. Now, in September 2026, another chapter begins with La Grande Table du Plaza Athénée.

And the name is deliciously deliberate. At the centre of the dining room stretches a monumental 12-metre marble table: part architectural statement, part social theatre, part invitation to conviviality. 

Under chefs Jocelyn Herland and Anthony Di Prospero, with pastry chef Angelo Musa, the restaurant proposes a contemporary interpretation of French grand dining, drawing on the great culinary thinkers of the nineteenth century — Antonin Carême, Jules Gouffé and Auguste Escoffier — without allowing nostalgia to overwhelm invention.

The six-course menu is seasonal, intensely French and consciously narrative. Each plate looks towards another chapter of France’s gastronomic history, while the kitchen remains firmly in the present. 

Every meal begins with the ‘Escoffier’ soup, before moving through composed starters and main courses, some finished tableside, towards the seductive finale of Le Grand Dessert Belle Époque. Created by Musa with Damien Gibault and Lucas Bresson, it revisits the pleasures of French pâtisserie through the prism of childhood memory. 

Master sommelier Laurent Roucayrol meanwhile creates pairings that move between celebrated producers and lesser-known discoveries.

Yet it is the service that may prove La Grande Table’s most memorable flourish.

The philosophy — “be spectacular without ever becoming a spectacle” — is wonderfully Parisian. Under restaurant director Denis Courtiade and deputy director Anna Crupano, ceremony becomes part of the cuisine: tableside carving, flambé service and garnishes presented as sharing platters introduce movement, anticipation and a little theatre without ever descending into performance for performance’s sake.

This is hospitality as choreography.

François Delahaye, chief operating officer of Dorchester Collection and general manager of Hôtel Plaza Athénée, describes the transformation as “continuity as much as renewal”, honouring the heritage, talent and standards that shaped the restaurant while creating “a fresh vision for the future”. 

He adds: “There is nothing more modern than reinterpreting the traditions of the past, championing a sense of timelessness, and in doing so, allowing France to shine in our own way.”

That sentiment perhaps explains La Grande Table better than any menu description could.

For the long-staying guest, the experience becomes particularly seductive. One need not merely visit the Plaza Athénée; one can inhabit its universe — waking beneath couture-inspired interiors, wandering onto avenue Montaigne, watching Paris unfold beyond the crimson façade, and eventually surrendering to an evening in which French culinary history is served with the same attention to detail as a beautifully cut couture gown.

La Grande Table does not attempt to reinvent the Plaza Athénée. It understands something far more sophisticated: the most luxurious form of modernity can sometimes be memory, beautifully re-cut for the present. 

And at this grand dame of Parisian hospitality, dinner is no longer simply dinner. It is another way of living the Plaza Athénée story. 

For teservations, you can drop an email to lagrandetable.HPA@dorchestercollection.com, book through telephone at +33 (0)1 53 67 65 00, or online at https://www.sevenrooms.com/explore/lagrandetableduplazaathenee/reservations/create/search/?lang=en&_gl=1*fhgycb*_ga*MzA3NzI4NDk1LjE3OTAwNDY0MjQ.*_ga_PQN2MPLXYZ*czE3OTAwNTk2MDUkbzEkZzAkdDE3OTAwNTk2MTAkajYwJGwwJGgw*_ga_B2NRRBNJH0*czE3OTAwNTk2MDUkbzIkZzAkdDE3OTAwNTk2MTAkajYwJGwwJGgw*_ga_VWQW0P86VZ*czE3OTAwNTk2MDUkbzEkZzAkdDE3OTAwNTk2MTEkajYwJGwwJGgw*_gcl_au*MTc5MDY0MDIzNi4xNzkwMDU5NjEw today!

*Photos courtesy of Plaza Athénée Paris.