The place are you able to discover a bookstore, two cocktail menus, three centuries’ price of French tradition — and a music kiosk?
Neatly packed in a 2,700-square-foot Seventeenth century townhouse on Boulevard Saint-Germain that’s now house to Cravan, the five-story cocktail-centric venue imagined by historian-turned-restaurateur-turned-mixologist Franck Audoux.
A cursory look from the road could lead on one to consider that is simply one other stylish cocktail bar, with stools neatly lined at a wooden counter and a clutch of alcoves dotted alongside wood-paneled partitions.
However from the doorway with its 1:15-scale mannequin of the constructing that accommodates an excellent tinier duplicate of itself, stepping inside is the beginning of a surreal continuation of the universe Audoux created within the first Cravan bar — a 17-seat slip of a spot positioned in a 1911 constructing within the sixteenth arrondissement. They’re named after Arthur Cravan, a poet, boxer and Dadaist determine who was a nephew of Oscar Wilde.
The primary ground with its elegant options bisected by a ’70s metal and marble bar.
Vincent Leroux/Courtesy of Cravan
The 120-seat Saint-Germain townhouse means to be “the type the place you will get misplaced in,” the place “the upper you go, the deeper you might be steeped in references that nourish Cravan,” explains Audoux, who earlier than veering into mixology spent a decade working in modern artwork and one other in gastronomy as one of many cofounders of famous superb eating restaurant Le Chateaubriand within the tenth arrondissement.
The unique bar utilized what he discovered through the analysis for his “French Moderne: Cocktails from the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties” guide, printed in 2019 at Rizzoli. Tapping into their historical past as an embodiment of a time of social and cultural change, Audoux turned the concept of “French excellence in an American or English drink” into modern concoctions that drew rave opinions.
They proceed to be the star right here, served with out prospers or fancy garnish. Ice cubes solely seem in lengthy drinks and if there’s one secret Audoux is prepared to share, it’s {that a} dry, quite than candy, end is vital to keep away from saturating the style buds and to make the subsequent sip as palatable as it’s fascinating.
For all of the sophistication and legerdemain concerned in these drinks, “obvious simplicity” stays key for its founder, whose work hinges round two to 3 substances at most.
“That opens a door in the direction of gastronomic complexity. However the base ingredient had higher be prime notch,” he says, explaining {that a} cocktail is above all “concerning the pressure between substances.”
Living proof: the Royal Basilic, on the menu at each Cravan outposts. This two-ingredient cocktail, an infusion of Sicilian basil flowers bolstering a floral side in Ruinart’s Brut Champagne, is the very first Cravan recipe and “encapsulates all of Cravan’s know-how” for Audoux.
He took the concept additional with Cravan’s bottled cocktails, one of many stars of the brand new venue.
The library, or quite Paris’ first Rizzoli bookstore, on the second ground of Cravan.
The precept behind these tipples, developed along with 75-year-old distillery Nusbaumer, a family-owned firm primarily based within the jap French area of Alsace, is “ work on a spirit, barely touching it, protecting its typicality and taking part in with it,” hand-in-hand with cellar masters.
Take “Archi,” an 18-year-old Glenmorangie whisky whose pear notes have been bolstered by the tart twist of a pear cordial. That specific dialog had him feeling like a watchmaker adjusting minute gears earlier than heading to Edinburgh to seek the advice of “Physician Invoice,” the single-malt distillery’s director of distilling, whisky creation and whisky shares Invoice Lumsden.
“It’s essential to have a dialog, an trade of know-how and a standard imaginative and prescient,” says Audoux, who developed six bottled recipes. Two, together with Archi, may also be purchased to be loved at house.
Congruent with the concept of liquid gastronomy and providing substances of their truest expression, drinks are left unfiltered to present a fuller-bodied sip. “For those who take away texture, it could be like serving a dinner with nothing however espumas,” quips Audroux.
The identical concepts holds true for the sharing plates, eclectic recipes meant as a journey diary of kinds, together with the Gilda, a well-known pintxo finger meals from the Spanish border city of San Sebastian fabricated from a guindilla pepper, an anchovy fillet and an olive; a “tamago” onsen egg parfait, floating in an impeccable dashi broth; in addition to the “Eton bleau,” a moreish strawberry, cream and meringue that’s a hybrid between England’s Eton mess and France’s Fontainebleau.
Greater than sustenance, nonetheless, Audoux sees every creation — alcoholic or not, drink or dish — as a key that unlocks a gateway towards “books you wouldn’t usually attain for, music you’d not take heed to, stylists or designers you wouldn’t know, movies you wouldn’t see elsewhere,” he explains.
This second iteration of Cravan was born within the canine days of France’s lockdowns, when, like others in gastronomy and hospitality, Audoux felt there was a necessity for reinvention. He reached out to the wine and spirits division of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, in search of a accomplice to “amplify what was carried out within the ‘Petit’ Cravan to make it accessible to a better viewers.”
Philippe Schaus and Franck Audoux within the floor ground bar.
David Atlan/Courtesy of Cravan
With its “very subtle expertise round superb, elegant cocktails, and discoveries,” Audoux’s idea fell in keeping with Moët Hennessy’s said ambition of “crafting experiences,” providing an strategy that goes from the gustative to the mental, recollects its chairman and chief government officer Philippe Schaus.
Describing Cravan as “a novel fusion between a really stylish cocktail bar in a phenomenal resort, a personal membership open to the general public and the house of an inside ornament buff,” the manager stated it and tasks just like the six-month pop-up expertise of Casa Eminente or Harrods’ Moët bar have been milestones “in the direction of extra proximity with the buyer, extra competency in creating experiences and bringing them alive — each time you move a step like this, you’re enlarging your horizon.”
Every ground at Cravan has been imagined as “a Seventeenth-century home, with cubes telling the story of one other time slotted in.” Paris-based Belgian designer Ramy Fischler sourced 80 % of the supplies by means of reclamation, from unused theater decors to deadstock luxurious textiles drawn from Nona Supply.
Plywood buildings, obvious upon exiting every bar house, recast the place as a succession of decors to embody the concept that “since we’re telling tales, we embrace that the settings are levels,” in response to Audoux.
The bottom ground is an apothecary, with a duplicate of the Petit Cravan (bar and painted ceiling included) merely slotted in the midst of the house; the primary ground accommodates a sublime salon bisected by a chrome steel and marble bar redolent of ’70s structure icon the Drugstore Publicis on the Champs-Elysées.
Then comes the second-floor library, the place the “modern field” is Paris’ first and solely Rizzoli bookstore the place tomes may be browsed or purchased on every little thing from Japanese designers and streetwear labels to skater Mark Gonzales and Spike Jonze’s guide on the Beastie Boys, chosen with editor-turned-friend Ian Luna.
The third ground, with its stately chimney, faux-peeling frescoes and vintage rugs collaged collectively, is house to Cravan’s bottled cocktails. One ground up is an artist’s workshop solely accessible by invitation, lined with cabinets crammed with Cravan’s eclectic guide assortment and fitted with a cinema display screen and state-of-the-art music system, which is slated to open in September.
Bottled cocktails are the star on the fourth ground — and third bar.
And that music kiosk? One other steel spiral staircase hidden behind a wall of realistic-looking faux guide spines — not stately tomes however sensible paperbacks that you can discover in any French family — leads as much as the roof, the place it’s improbably (however securely) perched.
It’s not a kind of occasion rooftops with sweeping vistas of the Metropolis of Gentle and its monuments. As a substitute, there’s the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church and a plunging view on Café de Flore and neighborhood favourite bookstore L’Ecume des Pages, a sight he finds refreshingly home.
However cinematic because the townhouse could also be, Audoux is adamant it function a mere backdrop for a second to have an excellent drink. No bottles on show, no shakers being thrown within the air, elegant glassware that highlights the contents with out distracting from them. There’s the sense that even the backstory of Cravan could possibly be non-obligatory because the cocktail and its mixologist are the beginning of the story.
“Much less is extra,” he says. “Style, taste, stability, your expertise of the cocktail. After which we are able to discuss it – in the event you so want.”
Cravan, 165 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 — open Tuesday to Thursday, from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Friday and Saturday, from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.
