La Réserve Paris

It’s by no means a universal rule, but sometimes at the very top end of the luxury-hotel market you’ll find hotels that are confident enough to name themselves something as understated and, well, reserved as La Réserve. This hotel, as it turns out, has much to be confident about. While La Réserve is less ostentatious than Paris’s officially designated palace hotels, it’s every bit their equal, if not their superior — at the very least it’s gone straight into the top tier of Parisian luxury hotels.

One street off the Champs-Élysées, and practically right next door to the president’s palace, La Réserve occupies a stately, subdued 19th-century Haussmannian structure. Its interiors, however, are brand new, exquisitely designed by Jacques Garcia, whose typically romantic style is at its most refined here. The rooms and suites are as lavish as they come, large by any standard but positively palatial for Paris, and they’re equipped with every imaginable luxury, from Carrara marble baths to Toto washlets and individual butler service.

Suites outnumber rooms, as is only fitting for a small hotel whose entire clientele is drawn from the global elite — they’re meant to feel more like private residences than hotel rooms, and on that score you’d have to judge them a success. This residential atmosphere, however, doesn’t preclude some substantial luxury-hotel services. The spa, specializing in Nescens-Swiss anti-aging treatments, also contains a 50-foot indoor pool, and the hotel includes not one but two restaurants: the two-Michelin-starred Le Gabriel and La Pagode de Cos, under the direction of Jérome Banctel, who’s got two Michelin stars of his own.