The first requirement of a good hotel isn’t a buzzy lobby or throbbing restaurant with bouncers. It isn’t a rooftop club or a basement club or any club at all. A good hotel wants its guests to sleep. Sleep as if they’re on a cloud, as if they’ve never heard of jet lag, as if they’re a teenager after exams.
La Fantaisie, a new boutique hotel in Paris’s Ninth Arrondissement, is a sleeper’s paradise. It’s located on a pedestrian street that’s dotted with food and wine shops and seemingly devoid of tourists. That’s a long way of saying it’s quiet.
The hotel’s commitment to REM extends to its turndown service, which includes not chocolates on your pillow (the caffeine, the sugar!) but CBD gummies and a satin eye mask with the words Bonne Nuit. And a bonne nuit it was for me when I stayed there in January.
Opening your eyes to greet the day, you will probably wake up on the right side of the bed, because the room is decorated like a good mood. It’s all sunny yellows, greens, pale blues, and pinks, which sounds possibly stress-inducing but is absolutely charming and unexpectedly soothing. It’s the work of Martin Brudnizki, the London-based Swede who also created the interiors for Annabel’s in London (which a friend describes as “maximalist Amazon rainforest meets San Simeon”).
The rest of the hotel is more energized, but not Annabel’s-manic. Flowers bloom everywhere in honor of the Cadet brothers, 16th-century master gardeners who gave Rue Cadet, where the hotel is located, its name. It’s as bucolic as a city hotel can be.
Through the entrance, there’s a small café on one side and a tiny salon on the other. Both are bursting with flowers in fabric, wallpaper, and painting form. Walk past the receptionist to find the main restaurant, Golden Poppy. It feels like a solarium, with an indoor garden holding an olive tree in the center. There’s an abundance of floral upholstery and botanical prints on marigold walls, with a greenhouse in the back that opens onto a leafy garden dotted with tables.
The restaurant arrived to great fanfare last year, given that it’s the first in Paris from Dominique Crenn, the French chef and the only woman in the U.S. to win three Michelin stars, for Atelier Crenn, in San Francisco.
Golden Poppy reverses the concept by interpreting California cuisine for Paris. The menu is pescatarian and divided into whimsical but head-scratching sections: “California Soul,” “Love Blooms,” “Togetherness Is Love.” The latter are dishes to be shared and include a pan of Parker House rolls with condiments (raw egg, smoked butter, and koji butter). There are also potatoes with plankton and a bottarga flan topped with a syrupy, sweet sauce.
On the roof is an enormously pleasant landscaped terrace serving inventive, floral-herbal cocktails and a whole list of alcohol-free drinks, including my favorite, French Bloom sparkling wine. If your vision is twenty-twenty, you can see the twinkling Eiffel Tower in the distance; if not, you have a clear view of Sacré-Coeur.
The brief room-service menu lacks the things many American travelers crave: there are no club sandwiches, no hamburgers, no french fries. Instead, there’s Caesar salad with shrimp, risotto with gouda, and a meatless chili, along with some sweets. When I returned from a long cocktail party, I studied it and, resigned, ordered a grilled cheese. It was delivered on a plain wooden tray, just a sandwich on a plate. For such a cheerful place, the lack of accoutrements was a disappointment, but the sandwich itself was nicely rich and gooey.
My deluxe room was just the right size for me on a solo trip, with a tiny desk and café table covered with welcome pastries and juices. The tiled bathroom had only a shower. Fine by me, but fans of baths will enjoy one of two suites. There are 63 rooms and 10 suites, the grandest of which has a long, plant-lined terrace with multiple seating areas.
The hotel adds style and thoughtfulness to even the most quotidian necessities. There are Holidermie hair and skin products in the bathroom, an electrical adapter in the bedside drawer, and a steamer in the closet. The mini-bar is filled with kombucha, artisanal sodas, and canned cocktails, along with a sleep tincture by L’Officine Botanique.
The basement spa also hews to the compact-but-efficient credo. A room covered in mosaics holds a series of tubs: cold plunge, mineral bath, hot tub, and Jacuzzi—along with a hammam and two saunas, traditional and infrared. The gym has one stationary bicycle and a wall machine fitted with weighted pulleys, leather hand weights that look like croissants (maybe because I hadn’t had breakfast), and a built-in video for instructions. After my workout, I had an excellent massage with just the right amount of pressure and long, luxurious strokes to get out the kinks from the overnight flight.
I was blissed out when I stepped into the elevator to leave the fantasy of La Fantaisie. Instead of anonymous music, there are piped-in chirps and tweets. After several nights, I felt as cheerful and bright as those well-rested birds, wherever they are.
Rooms at La Fantaisie begin at $500 per night
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look
