THE HUNGER GAMES

Two former bons amis grew up in the same expensive suburb and cut their teeth together in the Paris nightclub scene. Then they launched competing restaurant empires, and the gloves came off. Now one of them is facing a suspended prison sentence and a huge fine. Welcome to the city's most delicious grudge match.

- GABE ULLA

On any given evening this spring in Paris’s 8th Arrondissement, you could walk around the corner from the Hôtel de Crillon and behold something many thought they would never see again. Maxim’s, the famed bistro that debuted in 1893 and hosted generations of boldface names, had its lights on and was very much open for business. A peek in the windows of this icon of Art Nouveau opulence, which was reborn last December after lying dormant for years, would reveal a room full of Parisian bankers and fashion executives, the type of crowd that is at home in a place where the filet is 103 euros and no one really cares who’s in the kitchen preparing it.

A resurrection of this magnitude would cause astonishment in most cities, but in Paris it has barely raised an eyebrow. Indeed, some of the assembled at Maxim’s were probably just happy that they no longer needed to trek to Lapérouse (the 258-yearold restaurant in the 6th, which had its miraculous reopening in 2019) whenever they craved a dose of historic bling with a side of bourgeois comfort food.

A first-timer visiting Maxim’s and Lapérouse might think they were owned by the same company—one that seems to own a host of other business-casual restaurants, polished nightclubs, and already-reserved alfresco tables with the best views in Paris. In fact, Maxim’s is operated by Laurent de Gourcuff, Lapérouse by Benjamin Patou. Both 47 years old and born only months apart, the former friends got their start in the nightlife scene in the 1990s and went on to build competing multimillion-dollar hospitality empires the likes of which Paris, a town where gastronomy has always been culture and the chef has always mattered, had never seen before. Now, while the increasingly food-focused tourists of the world scour every blog in search of the next revelatory meal, upmarket Parisians keep giving Gourcuff and Patou reasons to expand.