That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.”
That’s what the character Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard, says in Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris, and truer words were surely never uttered about the French capital.
In the film, Adriana dreams of an absinthe-lit Paris that today is long gone. But on a recent weekend away with my partner, I found one corner of the city where a glittering version of that world lives on.
We arrived in the City of Love by Eurostar, the chicest possible entry to the Continent, and dropped our bags first at our hotel, Le Grand Mazarin. More on that later. We only had 24 hours and a city to devour, so we headed straight out.
A statue of Alfred Dreyfus in the courtyard of Paris's Museum of Jewish Art and History[Missing Credit]
Le Grand Mazarin sits on the Right Bank, amid streets of galleries, boutiques, cafés and department stores, and just a few minutes’ stroll from the Seine, the Place des Vosges, the Musée National Picasso Paris and the Centre Pompidou; Notre Dame is about 15 minutes on foot.
Most importantly, the hotel sits in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, where Jews have lived since the Middle Ages. Here the Pletzl, as it is nicknamed in Yiddish, is packed with Jewish life. Nestled between cute stores and high-end designers are Judaica shops, synagogues and a Chabad House, as well as faded messages calling for the release of the hostages and stickers remembering fallen IDF soldiers. In 2026, it feels important to say the atmosphere in this particular corner of the European capital felt warm and safe.
As a self-respecting Jewish couple, obviously our first mission was food. And no, I do not mean croissants or crêpes. We were after falafel.
My boyfriend, an Israeli Frenchman, has oft lauded L’As du Fallafel. Nestled at 34 Rue des Rosiers, fans of this joint include Natalie Portman and Lenny Kravitz. An American newspaper once called it the falafel destination in Europe. Let me be less diplomatic. It is the best in the world. At least the best I have ever eaten – and I include Tel Aviv in this.
Leave time for the line - the falafel is worth it[Missing Credit]
The shop is kosher and closed on Saturdays so we joined the long Friday lunch queue, waiting 45 minutes to an hour. Reader, it was worth every minute.
When the pitas arrived, they were cloud-soft and warm, stuffed with sweet fried aubergines and emerald-bright falafel, crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside. None of the sad brown mush that plagues most falafels in London. As we inhaled the lot on a nearby bench, fresh red chilli and bright amba sauce dripped down our hands.
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We weren’t done eating, of course. Our next stop was the famed bakery, Sacha Finkelsztajn. Family-run since 1946, the Ashkenazi bakery-cum-deli known as “La Boutique Jaune” for its yellow façade, offers gefilte fish, chopped liver, latkes, strudel and challah. We opted for a slab of cheesecake: light, fluffy, not too sweet, rather like the one my mother makes for Shavuot.
Well-fed, we drifted between the treasure-packed independent boutiques, high-street favourites, and vintage shops, before returning to the hotel for a pause before dinner. Thank goodness we did.
Paris often gives me a twitch: too much beauty, not enough hours. But stepping into Le Grand Mazarin, time seems to slow. So if you are lucky enough to stay at this five-star luxury hotel, I beg you – please, please – leave yourself enough time to revel in it.
French fashion brand owner, Patrick Pariente, reopened this 14th-century building in 2023 with his hotel company, Maisons Pariente. He brought in design prodigy Martin Brudnizki to transform the space into a maximalist fantasy. Brudnizki previously reimagined Annabel’s in Mayfair into a riot of high-class amusement, and his trademark exuberance is evident in every crevice here: from leopard-print cornices to the 500 oil paintings stretched across fabric walls.
From the lobby, smiling purple-suited receptionists escorted us to our room, one of just 61. Opening like a chocolate-box, full of Wes Anderson-pastel shades, antique finds and state-of-the-art amenities, there was an elegant equilibrium. Our feet sank into seashell-flecked rugs; a fully stocked drinks cabinet offered generous complimentary choices; and nautical wallpaper washed across bright wardrobes. Even the toilet was a delight, giving me my first encounter with a Japanese high-tech lavatory, which included a pre-warmed seat. Toasty!
You could easily spend a full day enjoying the hotel. There’s a grotto-like hammam spa, a speakeasy, a subterranean swimming pool lined with frescoes and a gym stylish enough to make me consider picking up a weight.
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Underground swimming pool (Vincent Leroux)[Missing Credit]
We scoffed the delightful macarons left in our room and slipped down to the pool, where we had the blue-and-green striped water to ourselves. We lounged on the red beds, with a beautiful mural painted by Jacques Merle floating overhead. After a spell in the whirlpool bath and sauna, we returned upstairs to a room turned down for bed, including the temperature set perfectly for sleep. The king-size mattress draped in a Versailles-style canopy seemed to beckon.
But we had a dinner reservation, so after a shower in a pink-marble bathroom fully stocked with Diptyque toiletries, we prised ourselves away from the room.
The hotel’s restaurant, Boubalé, is surely its crowning jewel.
Called after the Yiddish pet name the hotel’s founders were called by their grandmothers, this Ashkenazi-meets-Middle Eastern restaurant serves cuisine described as “a novel between Jerusalem and Paris”. It is headed up by Michelin-starred Israeli chef Assaf Granit, whose London restaurants include The Palomar.
The five-star hotel is situated on the Rue de la Verrerie[Missing Credit]
Portions of crunchy cauliflower with spicy sauce, lemon tahini and roasted sea bass with samphire arrived on chintzy crockery in generously sized portions. Everything we ate was divine, and the dining room itself was irresistible, with Parisian couples on dates, families gathering to mark special occasions and stylish French groups gathered. If you take one piece of advice: leave room for the chocolate mousse with olive oil and sea salt. The Israeli wine list is wonderfully broad too.
Afterwards, we slipped behind a heavy curtain into Le Bar de Boubalé for a nightcap. The cocktails, inspired by The Arabian Nights, feature flavours familiar to anyone who frequents Israel.
Breakfast the next morning was just as good. Served in the same Swedish-inspired room as dinner the night before, the buffet was excellent with two tables topped with fresh cheeses, fruit, smoked salmon, crisp pastries and golden sticks of French butter. There was also a cooked menu. I ordered French toast (when in France, after all) and what arrived redefined the dish entirely: two delicate sponges of brioche with caramel sauce. My boyfriend’s eggs looked contrastingly healthy but just as delicious.
Yes, this was my breakfast[Missing Credit]
To balance the indulgence, after the food we ambled over to the nearby Jewish Museum, the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme.
Housed in a 17th-century mansion, the museum combines a vast collection donated by Nathaniel Rothschild with those from the former Museum of Jewish Art in Montmartre. Visitors begin with medieval tombstones and move on to liturgical silver and embroidery from Italy’s ghettos; then objects and prints evoking Amsterdam, London and Bordeaux. There’s a Hebrew-inscribed slab from the fifth to seventh century, a third-century oil lamp, an ark from the 1400s, 17th-century German wedding rings and Moroccan jewellery from the 1900s.
It’s exactly the sort of space that makes a trip to Paris so important. London, after all, has no physical Jewish museum.
And just like that, our Paris escape came to a close. We walked back to the station, bags slightly heavier, stomachs more so, and I thought again of Adriana in Midnight in Paris. That Paris exists – and that I had to leave it – felt very much like a mystery. But you have to leave in order to return, and I will definitely be back. t
hotelsone.com/paris-hotels-fr/hotel-le-grand-mazarin
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