Le Train BleuA painted ceiling above a station dining room

The room was built first

Paris, France — Painted dining room inside a station.

The hall was built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle as the Buffet de la gare, a place to eat on arrival or while waiting. Marius Toudoire drew the plans; the station's clock tower and facade are his too. It opened in 1901 with President Emile Loubet present, and society and artists followed.

Two listed halls make up the restaurant. Look up and there are painted ceilings; look down the room and a chain of pendant lights hangs over the central axis, with tables set on both sides of it. Wood panelling, leather banquettes and parquet are all still where they were put. The 1972 listing as a historic monument covers more than these two halls: the Salons Doré, Tunisien and Algérien, together with several passages and the decoration inside them.

The main door is inside the station hall, up a few steps. Wheelchairs reach the room from the square on the clock-tower side, where a lift is called by intercom and brings guests up to the same floor.

A name borrowed from a train

The room was renamed Le Train Bleu in 1963. The name is borrowed from the Paris–Vintimille line of 1868, whose carriages ran along the Mediterranean and stopped at the towns of the Côte d'Azur one after another, so the name carried the coast into the middle of Paris. It stayed after the line itself had gone.

Nikita and Place Vendôme both shot scenes here. The room on the screen, the ring of pendant lights, the row of leather banquettes are all still in their places, so a guest who has seen either film takes a seat inside the frame of it.

Two ways the old dishes were changed

The signature preparations were rethought by Michel Rostang. He works with the restaurant as a partner rather than from inside it: the recipes pass through his hands, and what comes out of them stays part of this menu rather than becoming a second one.

The carte divides into starters, fish, meat, salads, desserts, coffee and tea, each of them a section of its own. A vegetarian section is set apart rather than folded into the rest, so it can be read straight through before anything else is chosen.