Le Voltaire

Voltaire died in this building in 1778; the restaurant on the ground floor opened around 1908 and has been the discreet rive-gauche table of writers, museum directors and Académiciens ever since. The dining room, behind a small front café that sells coffee and sandwiches to passers-by, is dim, pewter-bar, low ceiling, half a dozen tables, no signage. The menu is short and unchanged: escargots, sole meunière, profiteroles. There is a cult of the chocolat liégeois. The Picot family — proprietors for three generations — handed it to a trio of friends who left every wallpaper in place. Lunch is the reservation that matters; the publishing world is in the room.