On the sixth floor of La Tour d’Argent, the famous “canard au sang” is finished in the dining room, with a sauce prepared right before the guests’ eyes. Each duckling is served with a numbered card, a tradition established by former owner Frédéric Delair. During the next service, the duck will bear the number 1,209,487, a testament to the longevity of this ritual within the fine-dining restaurant.
The main dining room, which has been located on this level since 1936, features large floor-to-ceiling windows offering a direct view of the Seine and Notre-Dame. The table settings here are deliberately minimalist to highlight the panoramic view. At the back, an open kitchen bustles with activity under the direction of Chef Yannick Franques. The dining room staff, meanwhile, gather every day for a detailed briefing before welcoming guests. The restaurant also stands out for its monumental wine list: a volume weighing over six kilograms, comprising 400 pages and some 15,000 wine entries. Just above, the seventh-floor rooftop terrace houses a cocktail bar, accessible separately from the restaurant from noon to midnight.
A space dedicated to the restaurant’s archives
The building’s activity begins on the ground floor with a bar open from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m., which offers light bites in the afternoon and aims to become the Parisian benchmark for cognac. It is on this level that the historic lounge is located, the restaurant’s original location before it moved to the upper floors. Nearby, a “black room” has been set up to trace the history of the establishment and the Terrail family.
This exhibition space features autographs and photographs of numerous celebrities who have dined here, from Bourvil and Brigitte Bardot to several foreign heads of state. Finally, the archives reveal an unusual local curiosity through an old complaint form: until the 1980s, the restaurant itself paid the electricity bills for Notre-Dame Cathedral.