The first impression when entering the Opera Restaurant at the Palais Garnier is being in a grotto. I imagined growing mushrooms. My husband imagined the grotto in Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera. We were both right. Contrary to your normal grotto though, this one is full of light and color.

The fantasy of the menu is reflected in the ingredients. Keeping in the spirit of the Opera as a restaurant and as a place, mushrooms and honey from the hives on the Opera’s roof top are found in several dishes.

The dishes area created by Yann Tanneau and Hervé Moreau and the architectural design is the work of French architect Odile Decq; they work in harmony.

The dream of a restaurant here and the fantasy of the interior are pure French. It was Charles Garnier’s 1875 dream to install a restaurant in the space of the rotonde du glacier. Le Phantom opened in June 2011.

In an interview on Telematin’s France 2 (click “voir le video”), the architect, Odile Decq, explained that no walls, pillars or columns or the vault were to be touched with the new interior. The concession lasts for twenty years. If they want to return the space to its original setting, everything can be removed. The Opera is a classified building. It is a monument historique; nothing can be altered. This is the first major modernization since Chagall painted the Opera’s ceiling.

Madame Decq continued in the interview that there were very few constraints on imagining the design. She drew the façade and kept its wavy form. The idea is simple, she said; putting the design into practice was the challenge.
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