Paris notebook: Le Fumoir - good food, great cocktails

image from the website of Le Fumoir

I've been lucky enough to find myself in Paris twice in the past month, and both times I've visited Le Fumoir.

I don't know Paris spectacularly well, and hadn't been there in years until I had to go for a work trip in June (I say had to - I was practically jumping for joy when they asked me to go). I went on the earliest train possible so I could have lunch and a bit of a wander with one of my favourite colleagues before we had to meet up with the rest of our group and actually work.

Le Fumoir, just behind the Louvre, was the perfect spot and I would never have discovered it if not for a strong recommendation from a friend. Thank you Martyn!

image from the website of Le Fumoir

We ate lunch from the bar menu - a mushroom salad with a creamy dressing - which was good but not hugely memorable. The cocktails, however, were quite something. And it's a lovely place to just hang out. Given its location it should be packed with tourists and hyper expensive, but it isn't. I think because it's at the back of the Louvre, most tourists just don't get that far. They get sucked into the crowds around the museum and spat back out into the Tuileries and the roads on either side. The foreigners that are found in Le Fumoir tend to be a bit more stylish and/or well informed.  Or those who don't simply follow the crowd.

A few weeks later when we found ourselves walking around the area with a friend who lives in Paris and wondering where to go for a drink, I was rather proud to not only be able to suggest somewhere decent but to also know where it was and how to get there.

We drank zanzibars - delicious concoctions of rum, ginger, honey and lime - and negronis, smoked some cigarettes and listened in on other people's conversations on a warm evening and watched people walking their dogs and the dust blowing around the pathway behind the Louvre. It was all rather nice.

Le Fumoir also has a proper restaurant with a good reputation which I am determined to try on our next trip.

Le Fumoir
6 Rue de L'Amiral Coligny
75001 Paris
+33 (0)142920024