Bar Anglais, France sur Paris

A Frenchly Honest review, as told by MaisOui Le Frenchy. There are bars in Paris that remind you why Paris invented the concept of civilised drinking, and there are bars that merely charge for it. The Bar Anglais at the Hôtel Regina, I am pleased to report, belongs to the former category — which, given how rarely one can say this anymore, practically qualifies as a civic achievement. Let us begin where one must always begin: the room. The carved wood panelled ceiling alone — warm-toned, ornate, extravagant in the most unapologetic Belle Époque fashion — should be sufficient reason to sit down, say nothing, and simply look upward for a moment. Crimson velvet armchairs, damask walls, etched glass doors, black-and-white diamond floor tiles. It is the kind of interior that does not ask for your approval, because it has never needed it. I confess a certain personal kinship with this decorating philosophy. One either rises to meet it, or one does not enter. This is, incidentally, no accident. The hotel has been in the hands of the same French family — the Baverez — since its founding in 1900, now in its fourth generation. The founders were, by all accounts, passionate about art and assembled the finest craftsmen of their era to realise their vision. It shows. It still shows. Consider, for a moment, the alternative. The Ritz, Le Meurice, the Plaza Athénée, the Crillon, the George V, Le Bristol — not one of them French-owned. When the palaces of Paris are dressed by foreign sovereign funds and royal families, the result tends toward a luxury that is impeccable, expensive, and entirely without nationality. The classic French flair does not disappear overnight — it is simply quietly replaced, until one day you look around a grand Parisian salon and realise it feels like an airport lounge with better chandeliers. The Baverez family has not done this. Four generations of the same Parisian family, and the Bar Anglais still looks precisely as a Bar Anglais at a Belle Époque hotel facing the Tuileries ought to look. This is not nostalgia. This is conviction. And in the current landscape of Parisian hospitality, it is practically an act of cultural defiance. We arrived in the afternoon and lingered into the evening — a natural consequence of a room that rewards staying. The drinks were composed with evident care: a Chocolate Martini executed with precision, and an Only French — a cocktail whose name I found both presumptuous and, ultimately, accurate, which I say as a Frenchman who does not give that particular compliment lightly. A third followed, whose name I shall not attempt to reconstruct, but whose quality I shall not forget. Each arrived as it should: without theatre, without delay, without the ostentatious flourish that lesser establishments mistake for sophistication. The staff deserves particular mention. They were attentive without hovering, discreet without being absent, and — rarest of all — demonstrably skilled at reading the room. Not merely the room as a whole, but each table within it. One does not always appreciate how much this matters until one encounters its opposite. At a five-star InterContinental in Marseille, the drinks accompaniment consisted of a single bowl of olives. At the Bar Anglais, one received both olives and nuts. This is, precisely, the difference between a hotel that has read about hospitality and one that has understood it. The star rating is identical. The standard is not. One does not need to be a hotel guest to experience it. The Bar Anglais is open to all, and one would encourage anyone with an appreciation for what Paris once was — and what it is increasingly struggling to remain — to simply walk in, sit down, and order something. Interiors of this character, maintained with this conviction, are becoming rare in Paris. In France, rarer still. They deserve to be used. The Bar Anglais at the Hôtel Regina is not trying to be anything other than what it is: one of the finest hotel bars in Paris. For once, that is entirely sufficient.