Romée de Goriainoff, Olivier Bon, and Pierre-Charles Cros, the owners, took inspiration from New York’s bar scene and created l’Experimental Cocktail Club, a speakeasy on rue Saint Sauveur in the Second Arrondissement. Located just north of Les Halles, you are going to feel like if you are walking through the medieval Paris.

The Experimental Cocktail Club is a discreet venue but it has no secret entrance, just a black façade. Once you enter, you’ll find the perfect combination of New Yorkspeakeasy – with a piano in the corner – and Parisian charm. Step inside, through the heavy velvet curtain, and you’ll be in a  chic-neo-baroque feeling.

This is one of Time Out’s 100 best bars in Paris. L’Experimental Cocktail Club has established a place for itself in the world of fancy drinks. Cocktail fans can choose from a menu of 14 libations made by mixologist Nicolas de Soto. After Experimental Cocktail Club’s mixes, you’ll never go back to the other drinks! The mixologies bars reinvent cocktails with fresh fruit juices and subtle spices.

You can find Tommy’s Margarita Especial made of 100% agave tequila Arette mix with lime juice and organic agave honey, infused with Bourbon vanilla and cloves. Or the Bee’s Kiss, Jamaican rum Appleton VX, cream, organic floral honey and crushed Indonesian pepper. The cocktails are innovative and delicious. Try the Experience Number 1, Hendrick’s gin, lemongrass, lemon juice and fresh basil. So delicious!

L’Experimental Cocktail Club is definitely worth a visit, especially for those who like New York City life, and we do! If you are thinking of going to Paris, we hope you enjoy your visit!

37 rue Saint Saveur

75002Paris

01 45 08 88 89

M: Sentier, Etienne Marcel

M-Th 7PM-2AM; Friday/Saturday 7PM-5AM 

Café Charlot, in Paris, is known to be one of peoples’ favorite places to have a delicious brunch with friends while you’re enjoying the incredible atmosphere. One of the best choices is to order a classic brunch menu. What can you find in this magic brunch? Fresh squeezed orange juice, hot chocolate, pain perdu, toasts, cherry tomatoes and shallots, fresh fruit salad, scrambled organic eggs with smoked salmon and soft chive cream cheese… Delicious!

In Café Charlot you can eat what most people define as ‘the perfect hamburger’. It is served with the right kind of bread (we all know French bread is extremely delicious!), a soft sesame seed bun, a perfectly cooked burger with everything it should have inside, and crispy French fries.

 If you prefer organic food you can also order chicken burger, also served with fries. Among the other gourmet sandwiches are the BLT, the hot sandwich Charlot (cheese, beef and grilled onions served on a french roll) and of course, the typical French croque. Café Charlot’s specials: le croque jeune homme and le croque jeune fille.

Le Marais

Café Charlot’s neighbourhood is Le Marais. The beautiful buildings indicate the moneyed status of the old residents. After the revolution, much of the area was abandoned by the rich, and poor bohemian types moved in. Almost the opposite of what happened in Soho inNewYorkCity.

Le Marais is now one of Paris’ significant localities for artists. Le Marais has become a fashionable district, where you can find many trendy and cozy restaurants, vogue houses, and art galleries.

 You can’t miss it!! Visit Le Marais on your next visit to Paris and chill out with a brunch at Charlot’s Café!!

One of the most iconic cities worldwide, sharpens our sense of sight and smell, enraptures us once again with an emblematic exhibition. Chistian Dior, the creator of “the flower women” created in 1947 a new perfume called “Miss Dior”.

From March 22nd to April 4^th, 2013, the National Galleries of the Grand Palais of Paris will be paying tribute to one of the most famous fragrances of the prestigious brand Christian Dior.

In 1947 the French designer created a new perfume “Miss Dior”, this fragrance, introduced during the postwar years the modernity and renovation that women needed.

In 2013, sixty-six years later, Dior gives carte blanche to 20 female artists originating from all around the world who are inspired by the perfume to give wings to their creativity.

In the exhibition, unpublished works by Lee Bull, Joana Vascondelos, Carole Benzaken and even Liang Yuanwei will be unveiled.

An original and unifying exhibition concept, around a perfume that became part of the collective memory.

When we enter in the exhibition, in order to show that fantasy and surrealism are the keys to his success, we can see a giant egg in which the artist is curled in the fetal position. Once inside, the first image that visitors must face, which is not suitable for sensitive stomachs, is a knife severing an eye from “Un Chien Andalou”, the short film that Dalí co-directed with Luis Buñuel. The faces among the attendees expressed perfectly the impression that the images causes.  causala the image. Several decades later, Dali keeps surprising.

The exhibition is arranged in a large U shape where the different periods of his works are chronologically organised. At first, we find his cubist works although Dalí won all his reputation for his most provocative works when surrealism came up.

Among them, we can find his biggest and most famous works such as Lobster Telephone, the Metamorphosis of Narcissus and The Persistence of Memory, whose inspiration, as Dalí claims, came to him when he saw a Camembert cheese melting to the sun.

However, the most interesting ones are the lesser-known, small dreamy thumbnails where one can appreciate the meticulous work of the artist in a framework of a few  square centimeters and how, nevertheless, they convey a sense of greatness. Worth seeing it live!

The exposure intelligently illustrates the artist’s journey from figurative dreamy art to a more contemporary, conceptual, theatrical, approach without hiding anything about the polymorphous nature of Dalí.

Despite the words of the artist claiming he was a bad painter because he was too smart, the Pompidou Centre made ​​their first retrospective  over 30 years ago, which was and still is the one that received more visits. Hopefully this second one will have the same success.

Bernat has worked with top fashion photographers, but confesses he would love to work with Bruce Weber for his personal style and because he can strongly identify himself with his aesthetics. When asked to choose a celebrity for her style and personality, he declares it’s impossible for him to pick just one. He highlights Paris as a city where fashion is really alive, and describes his job as like being a chef, but instead of using ingredients the stylist uses style elements to create a specific look.

For this upcoming fall he gives us the keys to create a successful look: a great deal of black leather  and contrast between a baroque and a more minimalist style.

If you visit the city of Paris, do not miss to follow the tips he recommends: Merci shop, an authentic temple of design, the vintage boutique Didier Ludot, where you are able to find genuine masterpieces of Lacroix, Chanel or Vuitton, and for a nice mail visit the Argentinian restaurant Anahi.

Bernat continues to be impressed each year with the amount of people that brings together the Paris Fashion Week,  the concentrated energy, and the magic that is created in just a few minutes. A unique show!

Actually, Paris’ Little Tokyo occupies the heart of the second district, one of the most chic and undiscovered in the city, which is built around the Rue Sainte-Anne street up to the Rue de la Banque street on one side and the Palais Royal gardens on the South.

To understand the presence of Japanese and Korean community in this area it is important to briefly review the lively History of the Rue Sainte-Anne, a sort of independent and advanced area of the capital. Already in 1822, at number 53, Nicolas street, the first open to the public wine celler was opened, as previously wine was only served in bars and cabarets. In the late 1960′s, the gay scene took over the street opening stores like Le Sept (at number 7) and Colony (at number 13), although it was Le Bronx (11) that actually lasted as the first venue to refuse entry to women and to create a backroom for intimate meetings. In the late 1970′s, the gay community moved to the Marais, using the newly discovered and large spaces created for the Centre Georges Pompidou. Japanese people then opened their first restaurants profiting of the presence of big venues at great rates and started to concentrate in the neighborhood. Today we can find restaurants specializing in sushi, ramen, traditional Japanese tea shop or Eastern fast food restaurants as well as Japan related travel agencies, cheese shops, clothing stores, food, tableware, decoration, places where to get a good massage, a nice haircut, academies to learn Japanese or the art of ikebana…

Unlike Chinatown in San Francisco or Japantown in Los Angeles, don’t expected the presence of oriental architecture buildings or a massive presence of Asians, everything is melted and integrated into the classic Parisian landscape and the mix of cultures is even higher than in other districts of the city where diversity would seem more evident.

So a nice Saturday or Sunday morning (everything will be open), we are able to walk and enjoy this strange atmosphere full of calm so characteristic of the Japanese people. We love spending time at the Ace Mart, one of the best equipped grocery stores, and treat ourselves with some good yakisoba or ice cream to keep wandering around.

We continue along the Rue Saint-Augustin with a mandatory stop a Book Off, two twin shops, one specialized in secondhand books in all languages and the other one specializing in Manga DVD and all kinds of Japanese graphic art and drawing… And of course benefiting from the sale season!

Given the extensive range of cuisine offer that we find this time we go for the most traditional option and we drop by Aki, right on the premises occupied by Le Bronx in the sixties. Lively and packed, as always, we choose a table since locals monopolized the bar.

For starters we share some Takoyaki (octopus dumplings) and Edamame, savory green beans cooked al dente and eaten leaving the skin. Of course, the Asahi beer is mandatory!

We carry on with an Okonomiyaki, a dish originally from the Osaka region consisting of a pancake made with egg and vegetables cooked in hot plate. Some call it Japanese pizza because it supports all kinds of ingredients.

A walk around the Quartir Japonais worth its salt indudes a stop at Marugen, in the Rue des Petits-Champs street, to take a look at all the novelties, otherwise it’s not a utter visit. There you will able to find absolutely everything and if not, Hiro will look it up for you.

While we are at spending a fun time, we take some pictures in the Purikuras. It is the only Japanese photo booth throughout Paris and we can assure you that the photos taken do not work out for the passport… You can add bubbles, clouds, colors, frames or comic bubbles to write nonsense inside…

We usually take a look at the outcome of the photos at the Zen Zoo, which also just opened another venue where to take their wonderful teas at home. Located in a lovely corner, this beautiful venue takes out their tables on the street during summer evenings for a quiet sip of your hot or cold drinks. You will find it in the corner of the streets Rue Chabanais and Rue Cherubini.

It is difficult to choose but, today we go for iced black and lime flavored teas, with its corresponding tapioca seeds inside…

We come back home with the feeling of having spent a great morning in Paris without being in Paris. Perhaps we take a rest to and go back for dinner and enjoy a good sake at the karaoke bar in the Rue de la Michodière…

 Xavi Vega, General Manager at Banke Hotel Paris

Category: Travel & Events
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In recent years, we have learned to enter without shame in a hotel simply to have a drink, eat some tapas or enjoy a meal. Indeed, hotel restaurants are becoming a gastronomic reference. Many of them choose to have a star chef, others adapt its menu to the aesthetics or philosophy of the venue (Eastern, minimalist, traditional, thematic …) or precisely looking to create a contrast. Some examples, the Banke Hotel offers Spanish cuisine in the center of Paris and the East 47 cocktail bar in Barcelona, located on the first floor the Claris Hotel, becomes the coolest place in the city to enjoy before dinner cocktails with friends.