Table of Content
5 Historic Parisian Brasseries Where Hemingway and Fitzgerald Dined
The Lost Generation came to Paris with thin wallets and thick notebooks, and they ate at brasseries because brasseries fed everyone — the carter, the editor, the broke poet from Oak Park. A century later, the surprise is how many of those rooms still serve the same dishes at the same hours, with the same brass plaques screwed to the same bars.
We asked our American clients chasing the Lost Generation map — Princeton alumni on Fitzgerald pilgrimages, Iowa Workshop graduates retracing the Sun Also Rises route, MFA candidates carrying annotated copies of A Moveable Feast — which historic Parisian brasseries actually delivered. Five names came back. Here is where Hemingway and Fitzgerald drank, ate, argued, and wrote, and the table you can still sit at today.
Contents
- Brasserie Lipp — The Publishers' Thursday Lunch
- La Closerie des Lilas — Hemingway's Writing Bar
- Bofinger — Art Nouveau and the Choucroute Royale
- Le Procope — Where the Eighteenth Century Still Eats
- Café de Flore — The All-Decades Round Table
- The Merveil Paris Experience
- Direct Booking Benefits and Personalized Support
Brasserie Lipp — The Publishers' Thursday Lunch
Brasserie Lipp opened in 1880 at 151 boulevard Saint-Germain and never moved. Hemingway puts Jake Barnes here in The Sun Also Rises, ordering a beer and a potato salad. The room is the same one: ceramic tile, mirrors at acute angles, green leather banquettes re-stuffed but not replaced.
The Room Hemingway Knew
You walk in past the brass-trimmed revolving door, and the maître d' decides where you sit. The ground floor, where Hemingway drank, is for regulars and bookable lunches. Upstairs is for tourists. Ask politely for the rez-de-chaussée and accept whatever you get. Order the choucroute Lipp: sauerkraut, salt pork, ham knuckle, two sausages. The menu has not changed in any way that matters since 1958.
Thursday at Twelve-Thirty
The publishers' lunch crowd still meets on Thursdays. Gallimard, Grasset, and Le Seuil keep tables; senior editors arrive at 12:30 sharp and leave by 3. Half the conversation is in French, half is manuscript. Sit two banquettes away with a book and you will hear next year's prix Goncourt being argued in real time. Anchor dish: the choucroute. Best hour: 1 p.m. Thursday, late enough that the room is full and early enough that the kitchen still cares.
La Closerie des Lilas — Hemingway's Writing Bar
La Closerie des Lilas opened in 1847 at 171 boulevard du Montparnasse, and Hemingway wrote chunks of The Sun Also Rises at one of its outdoor tables, before lunch, with a café crème and a yellow notebook. His brass plaque is still nailed to the bar, "E. Hemingway", near the corner.
The Plaque, the Notebook, the Stool
Walk into the bar to the right of the entrance and find the brass plaques running along the marble counter: Hemingway, Apollinaire, Beckett, Sartre, Verlaine. The stool in front of his is unreserved. Order a Bloody Mary, the house signature since the 1930s, and a plate of rillettes du Mans. The bartender will not press you to vacate. The wait staff pretends not to notice you photographing the plaque.
The Outdoor Tables Where He Worked
The terrace under the chestnut trees is the spot Hemingway describes in A Moveable Feast. Arrive at 11 a.m. on a weekday, ask for a corner table on the boulevard side, and order the steak tartare prepared at the table. The kitchen has done it the same way since Henry Miller was a regular. Anchor dish: tartare. Best hour: late morning, when the writers came and the tour groups have not.
Bofinger — Art Nouveau and the Choucroute Royale
Bofinger opened in 1864 at 5 rue de la Bastille and was the first brasserie in Paris to serve draft beer. The Art Nouveau ceiling, a stained-glass cupola installed in 1919, is the reason most travelers come. The reason Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds came was the choucroute royale, a sauerkraut platter so over-built that Zelda once asked the kitchen to stop sending it to her table.
Under the Glass Cupola
You want a table on the ground floor, directly under the cupola, in the round center room. The mosaic floor, marquetry mirrors, and wrought-iron balconies were all designed by Hansi, the Alsatian illustrator, between 1919 and 1925. The choucroute royale arrives in stages: Riesling-braised cabbage, six kinds of charcuterie, half a lobster on top. A dish to be photographed once and eaten with friends.
After the Opéra Bastille
Bofinger sits two minutes from the Opéra Bastille, the after-curtain table. Reserve for 11 p.m. on a performance night, ask for the round room, and order the plateau de fruits de mer with a bottle of Sancerre. The dining room stays alive until 1 a.m. Anchor dish: choucroute royale at lunch or fruits de mer at night. Best hour: 11 p.m. post-opera.
Le Procope — Where the Eighteenth Century Still Eats
Le Procope opened in 1686 at 13 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which makes it the oldest restaurant in Paris by more than a century. Voltaire kept his marble table here. It is still in the second-floor dining room, with his hat hanging above it. Diderot signed parts of the Encyclopédie at one of these tables. Benjamin Franklin, while ambassador to France, came on Tuesdays.
The Voltaire Table
Climb to the first floor and ask for the salle Voltaire. The table is roped off as a relic, but the four around it are bookable. Eating six feet from where Voltaire wrote Candide is as strange and worthwhile as it sounds. Order the coq au vin Procope, a recipe printed in the 1735 menu and made today with the same Burgundy reduction. Or the tête de veau, what Diderot ordered the night he and Rousseau finally stopped speaking.
A Walk Past the Comédie-Française
The street name comes from the original Comédie-Française across the road, where Molière's troupe performed before the company moved near the Palais-Royal. After dinner, walk five minutes to the Pont Neuf. Anchor dish: coq au vin Procope. Best hour: 8:30 p.m. on a weekday, when the dining room is full of Parisians and the candles do their work.
Café de Flore — The All-Decades Round Table
The Café de Flore opened in 1887 at 172 boulevard Saint-Germain. It is the only address on this list where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Beauvoir, Picasso, and Apollinaire all kept rounds. The upstairs room, the salle du premier, was Sartre and Beauvoir's working office for decades. They wrote on marble tables, paid for the coffee, and stayed from morning until the dinner shift began.
The Upstairs Salle
The ground floor is for photographers and people-watchers. Upstairs is for sitting four hours with one café crème, exactly the way Sartre did. Climb the staircase past the Bernard Buffet sketches, take a banquette by the boulevard window, and order the omelette aux fines herbes, on the menu since 1923. A pot of hot chocolate, made from melted Valrhona bars rather than powder, is the second order.
The Hour Hemingway Came
Hemingway preferred the Flore in the late afternoon, when the light fell flat on the boulevard and the place emptied between lunch and aperitif. Fitzgerald came earlier, around 4 p.m., to write postcards and read the Tribune. Today the right hour is 4:30 to 6 p.m., off-season. The photographers have left, the dinner crowd has not arrived, and you can sit at a window table for ninety minutes without anyone hurrying you.
The Merveil Paris Experience
Choosing the right brasserie is half the trip. The other half is where you sleep, and how easily you can walk to dinner without worrying about a metro transfer at midnight. Merveil Paris was built to put you within walking distance of the rooms Hemingway and Fitzgerald actually used.
Residences on the Lost Generation Map
Our properties sit in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, around Notre-Dame, in Le Marais, near the Louvre, by the Trocadéro, and along the Champs-Élysées. The Saint-Germain residences put you four minutes on foot from Lipp and the Flore, eight from Les Deux Magots, twelve from the Closerie. The Marais residences are six minutes from Bofinger. Each apartment has been restored with original parquet, three-meter ceilings, and a curated mix of antique and contemporary pieces.
| Brasserie | Address | Anchor Dish | Best Time to Visit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brasserie Lipp | 151 boulevard Saint-Germain | Choucroute Lipp | Thursday lunch, 1 p.m. |
| La Closerie des Lilas | 171 boulevard du Montparnasse | Steak tartare at the table | Late weekday morning |
| Bofinger | 5 rue de la Bastille | Choucroute royale | 11 p.m., post-opera |
| Le Procope | 13 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie | Coq au vin Procope | 8:30 p.m., weekday |
| Café de Flore | 172 boulevard Saint-Germain | Omelette aux fines herbes | 4:30 to 6 p.m. lull |
Five-Star Service, Residential Privacy
You will have a 24/7 concierge a phone call away, a private chef on demand, and a transfer team for arrivals at Charles de Gaulle, Orly, or Le Bourget. We can secure the table at Lipp on a Thursday, book the Voltaire table at Le Procope, or arrange a private literary walking tour with a Sorbonne professor. You keep the apartment, we handle the rest.
Direct Booking Benefits and Personalized Support
Booking directly with Merveil Paris is the most efficient way to start your stay. You deal with our team end to end, with no third-party platform fees and a 14-day cancellation window on most reservations.
Best Rates and Real People
Reserve through merveil-paris.com and you are guaranteed the most competitive rate. You also get an immediate line to our office on rue Royale: a real human, available in English, who replies within hours. Whether you want a 1 p.m. Thursday table at Lipp or a chauffeured day trip to Champagne, our concierge handles it before you arrive.
A Welcome Detail You Will Remember
Guests who confirm a reservation this week receive a complimentary bottle of champagne on arrival, a gesture we have kept since our first booking. For a bespoke proposal, call our advisors at +33 1 76 38 11 02 or visit merveil-paris.com. We are available 24/7.
FAQ
Which historic brasserie has the most direct Hemingway connection?
La Closerie des Lilas. Hemingway wrote chunks of The Sun Also Rises at its outdoor tables, and his brass plaque is still nailed to the bar. He named it in A Moveable Feast as the café in Paris that did not pretend to be anything else. For the room as Hemingway used it socially, Brasserie Lipp is the closer match: Jake Barnes orders his potato salad here in chapter eight.
Can you actually sit at Voltaire's table at Le Procope?
Not at the table itself; it is roped off as a museum piece on the first floor. But the four tables around it are bookable, and they put you within six feet of where Voltaire wrote and Diderot edited. Ask for the salle Voltaire when you reserve, and book at least two weeks ahead. The coq au vin Procope, made with the 1735 recipe, is the dish to order.
Do these brasseries still serve the same dishes from the Lost Generation era?
The signatures have not changed. Lipp still serves its choucroute. Bofinger still does the choucroute royale. The Closerie still prepares the steak tartare at the table. The Flore still serves the omelette aux fines herbes that has been on the menu since 1923. Le Procope still cooks the coq au vin from a recipe printed in 1735.
How should I plan a Lost Generation literary day in Paris?
Start at the Flore around 9 a.m. for the omelette and coffee. Walk ten minutes to Shakespeare and Company on rue de la Bûcherie. Lunch at Lipp on Thursday for the publishers' crowd. Spend the afternoon at the Musée d'Orsay or the Luxembourg Gardens, then dinner at the Closerie des Lilas at 8 p.m. Walk home along boulevard du Montparnasse and stop at Le Select for a nightcap.
5 Historic Parisian Brasseries Where Hemingway and Fitzgerald Dined
The Lost Generation came to Paris with thin wallets and thick notebooks, and they ate at brasseries because brasseries fed everyone — the carter, the editor, the broke poet from Oak Park. A century later, the surprise is how many of those rooms still serve the same dishes at the same hours, with the same brass plaques screwed to the same bars.
We asked our American clients chasing the Lost Generation map — Princeton alumni on Fitzgerald pilgrimages, Iowa Workshop graduates retracing the Sun Also Rises route, MFA candidates carrying annotated copies of A Moveable Feast — which historic Parisian brasseries actually delivered. Five names came back. Here is where Hemingway and Fitzgerald drank, ate, argued, and wrote, and the table you can still sit at today.
Contents
- Brasserie Lipp — The Publishers' Thursday Lunch
- La Closerie des Lilas — Hemingway's Writing Bar
- Bofinger — Art Nouveau and the Choucroute Royale
- Le Procope — Where the Eighteenth Century Still Eats
- Café de Flore — The All-Decades Round Table
- The Merveil Paris Experience
- Direct Booking Benefits and Personalized Support
Brasserie Lipp — The Publishers' Thursday Lunch
Brasserie Lipp opened in 1880 at 151 boulevard Saint-Germain and never moved. Hemingway puts Jake Barnes here in The Sun Also Rises, ordering a beer and a potato salad. The room is the same one: ceramic tile, mirrors at acute angles, green leather banquettes re-stuffed but not replaced.
The Room Hemingway Knew
You walk in past the brass-trimmed revolving door, and the maître d' decides where you sit. The ground floor, where Hemingway drank, is for regulars and bookable lunches. Upstairs is for tourists. Ask politely for the rez-de-chaussée and accept whatever you get. Order the choucroute Lipp: sauerkraut, salt pork, ham knuckle, two sausages. The menu has not changed in any way that matters since 1958.
Thursday at Twelve-Thirty
The publishers' lunch crowd still meets on Thursdays. Gallimard, Grasset, and Le Seuil keep tables; senior editors arrive at 12:30 sharp and leave by 3. Half the conversation is in French, half is manuscript. Sit two banquettes away with a book and you will hear next year's prix Goncourt being argued in real time. Anchor dish: the choucroute. Best hour: 1 p.m. Thursday, late enough that the room is full and early enough that the kitchen still cares.
La Closerie des Lilas — Hemingway's Writing Bar
La Closerie des Lilas opened in 1847 at 171 boulevard du Montparnasse, and Hemingway wrote chunks of The Sun Also Rises at one of its outdoor tables, before lunch, with a café crème and a yellow notebook. His brass plaque is still nailed to the bar, "E. Hemingway", near the corner.
The Plaque, the Notebook, the Stool
Walk into the bar to the right of the entrance and find the brass plaques running along the marble counter: Hemingway, Apollinaire, Beckett, Sartre, Verlaine. The stool in front of his is unreserved. Order a Bloody Mary, the house signature since the 1930s, and a plate of rillettes du Mans. The bartender will not press you to vacate. The wait staff pretends not to notice you photographing the plaque.
The Outdoor Tables Where He Worked
The terrace under the chestnut trees is the spot Hemingway describes in A Moveable Feast. Arrive at 11 a.m. on a weekday, ask for a corner table on the boulevard side, and order the steak tartare prepared at the table. The kitchen has done it the same way since Henry Miller was a regular. Anchor dish: tartare. Best hour: late morning, when the writers came and the tour groups have not.
Bofinger — Art Nouveau and the Choucroute Royale
Bofinger opened in 1864 at 5 rue de la Bastille and was the first brasserie in Paris to serve draft beer. The Art Nouveau ceiling, a stained-glass cupola installed in 1919, is the reason most travelers come. The reason Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds came was the choucroute royale, a sauerkraut platter so over-built that Zelda once asked the kitchen to stop sending it to her table.
Under the Glass Cupola
You want a table on the ground floor, directly under the cupola, in the round center room. The mosaic floor, marquetry mirrors, and wrought-iron balconies were all designed by Hansi, the Alsatian illustrator, between 1919 and 1925. The choucroute royale arrives in stages: Riesling-braised cabbage, six kinds of charcuterie, half a lobster on top. A dish to be photographed once and eaten with friends.
After the Opéra Bastille
Bofinger sits two minutes from the Opéra Bastille, the after-curtain table. Reserve for 11 p.m. on a performance night, ask for the round room, and order the plateau de fruits de mer with a bottle of Sancerre. The dining room stays alive until 1 a.m. Anchor dish: choucroute royale at lunch or fruits de mer at night. Best hour: 11 p.m. post-opera.
Le Procope — Where the Eighteenth Century Still Eats
Le Procope opened in 1686 at 13 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, which makes it the oldest restaurant in Paris by more than a century. Voltaire kept his marble table here. It is still in the second-floor dining room, with his hat hanging above it. Diderot signed parts of the Encyclopédie at one of these tables. Benjamin Franklin, while ambassador to France, came on Tuesdays.
The Voltaire Table
Climb to the first floor and ask for the salle Voltaire. The table is roped off as a relic, but the four around it are bookable. Eating six feet from where Voltaire wrote Candide is as strange and worthwhile as it sounds. Order the coq au vin Procope, a recipe printed in the 1735 menu and made today with the same Burgundy reduction. Or the tête de veau, what Diderot ordered the night he and Rousseau finally stopped speaking.
A Walk Past the Comédie-Française
The street name comes from the original Comédie-Française across the road, where Molière's troupe performed before the company moved near the Palais-Royal. After dinner, walk five minutes to the Pont Neuf. Anchor dish: coq au vin Procope. Best hour: 8:30 p.m. on a weekday, when the dining room is full of Parisians and the candles do their work.
Café de Flore — The All-Decades Round Table
The Café de Flore opened in 1887 at 172 boulevard Saint-Germain. It is the only address on this list where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Beauvoir, Picasso, and Apollinaire all kept rounds. The upstairs room, the salle du premier, was Sartre and Beauvoir's working office for decades. They wrote on marble tables, paid for the coffee, and stayed from morning until the dinner shift began.
The Upstairs Salle
The ground floor is for photographers and people-watchers. Upstairs is for sitting four hours with one café crème, exactly the way Sartre did. Climb the staircase past the Bernard Buffet sketches, take a banquette by the boulevard window, and order the omelette aux fines herbes, on the menu since 1923. A pot of hot chocolate, made from melted Valrhona bars rather than powder, is the second order.
The Hour Hemingway Came
Hemingway preferred the Flore in the late afternoon, when the light fell flat on the boulevard and the place emptied between lunch and aperitif. Fitzgerald came earlier, around 4 p.m., to write postcards and read the Tribune. Today the right hour is 4:30 to 6 p.m., off-season. The photographers have left, the dinner crowd has not arrived, and you can sit at a window table for ninety minutes without anyone hurrying you.
The Merveil Paris Experience
Choosing the right brasserie is half the trip. The other half is where you sleep, and how easily you can walk to dinner without worrying about a metro transfer at midnight. Merveil Paris was built to put you within walking distance of the rooms Hemingway and Fitzgerald actually used.
Residences on the Lost Generation Map
Our properties sit in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, around Notre-Dame, in Le Marais, near the Louvre, by the Trocadéro, and along the Champs-Élysées. The Saint-Germain residences put you four minutes on foot from Lipp and the Flore, eight from Les Deux Magots, twelve from the Closerie. The Marais residences are six minutes from Bofinger. Each apartment has been restored with original parquet, three-meter ceilings, and a curated mix of antique and contemporary pieces.
| Brasserie | Address | Anchor Dish | Best Time to Visit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brasserie Lipp | 151 boulevard Saint-Germain | Choucroute Lipp | Thursday lunch, 1 p.m. |
| La Closerie des Lilas | 171 boulevard du Montparnasse | Steak tartare at the table | Late weekday morning |
| Bofinger | 5 rue de la Bastille | Choucroute royale | 11 p.m., post-opera |
| Le Procope | 13 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie | Coq au vin Procope | 8:30 p.m., weekday |
| Café de Flore | 172 boulevard Saint-Germain | Omelette aux fines herbes | 4:30 to 6 p.m. lull |
Five-Star Service, Residential Privacy
You will have a 24/7 concierge a phone call away, a private chef on demand, and a transfer team for arrivals at Charles de Gaulle, Orly, or Le Bourget. We can secure the table at Lipp on a Thursday, book the Voltaire table at Le Procope, or arrange a private literary walking tour with a Sorbonne professor. You keep the apartment, we handle the rest.
Direct Booking Benefits and Personalized Support
Booking directly with Merveil Paris is the most efficient way to start your stay. You deal with our team end to end, with no third-party platform fees and a 14-day cancellation window on most reservations.
Best Rates and Real People
Reserve through merveil-paris.com and you are guaranteed the most competitive rate. You also get an immediate line to our office on rue Royale: a real human, available in English, who replies within hours. Whether you want a 1 p.m. Thursday table at Lipp or a chauffeured day trip to Champagne, our concierge handles it before you arrive.
A Welcome Detail You Will Remember
Guests who confirm a reservation this week receive a complimentary bottle of champagne on arrival, a gesture we have kept since our first booking. For a bespoke proposal, call our advisors at +33 1 76 38 11 02 or visit merveil-paris.com. We are available 24/7.
FAQ
Which historic brasserie has the most direct Hemingway connection?
La Closerie des Lilas. Hemingway wrote chunks of The Sun Also Rises at its outdoor tables, and his brass plaque is still nailed to the bar. He named it in A Moveable Feast as the café in Paris that did not pretend to be anything else. For the room as Hemingway used it socially, Brasserie Lipp is the closer match: Jake Barnes orders his potato salad here in chapter eight.
Can you actually sit at Voltaire's table at Le Procope?
Not at the table itself; it is roped off as a museum piece on the first floor. But the four tables around it are bookable, and they put you within six feet of where Voltaire wrote and Diderot edited. Ask for the salle Voltaire when you reserve, and book at least two weeks ahead. The coq au vin Procope, made with the 1735 recipe, is the dish to order.
Do these brasseries still serve the same dishes from the Lost Generation era?
The signatures have not changed. Lipp still serves its choucroute. Bofinger still does the choucroute royale. The Closerie still prepares the steak tartare at the table. The Flore still serves the omelette aux fines herbes that has been on the menu since 1923. Le Procope still cooks the coq au vin from a recipe printed in 1735.
How should I plan a Lost Generation literary day in Paris?
Start at the Flore around 9 a.m. for the omelette and coffee. Walk ten minutes to Shakespeare and Company on rue de la Bûcherie. Lunch at Lipp on Thursday for the publishers' crowd. Spend the afternoon at the Musée d'Orsay or the Luxembourg Gardens, then dinner at the Closerie des Lilas at 8 p.m. Walk home along boulevard du Montparnasse and stop at Le Select for a nightcap.
