‘Une invitation au voyage’
Last Monday I took the TGV from Paris to Cannes to attend the annual MIPIM property conference. This grand and familiar train journey was preceded by a café gourmand in Le Train Bleu, one of the city’s grandest venues. The brasserie above the Gare de Lyon is a mythical place where the elegant revolving door feels like a portal – both to train travel and to time travel.
The décor of Le Train Bleu looks like a magnificent film set. The ornate twin staircases leading to the upper floor entrance have an air of The Titanic, whilst the inside looks like The Orient Express (the Blue Train was the sister of the famous locomotive to Istanbul). Up above today’s functional sandwicheries, and wheelie bags, the iconic brasserie is a gateway to La Belle Epoque – an era before World War One associated with peace, prosperity and progress. The soundscape in the restaurant is a proper haven of peace and prosperity, an oasis of serene conversation isolated from SNCF jingles and station announcements.
The voluminous station buffet in the 12th arrondissement was constructed for Paris’ 1900 World Fair when train travel was in its infancy. The same event introduced other Belle Epoque icons such as la Gare d’Orsay – now the Orsay museum. What started as ‘Le Buffet de la Gare de Paris-Lyon’ declined after World War Two before being reinvented as “Le Train Bleu” in 1963, listed in 1972 and completely renovated in 2014. The restaurant is dedicated to the “P.L.M.” train company (Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée) and throughout the 21st century, the station’s attraction has been reinforced by TGV bullet trains – considered a French national treasure – connecting Paris with Lyon and Marseille in only three hours.
The restaurant operators describe their extravagant interior as an ‘invitation au voyage’ and the venue certainly has the luxe, calme et volupté of Baudelaire’s celebrated poem of the same name. Above the gilded chandeliers, the 8-metre-high ceilings are covered by giant murals, originally a Belle Epoque marketing tool to attract travellers. The blue Mediterranean skies in many of the 41 wall paintings are echoed in the restaurant’s thick blue carpeting and the blue leather seating.
The food is high quality ‘regional’ cuisine. The house of Michel Rostang, a Michelin starred chef, uses simple and fresh products from across France. The ‘wow factor’ and attention to detail of the décor is echoed in the fine service. Le spectacle is the thing. Many of the classic dishes are wheeled out on stylish trolleys by waiters in waistcoats and crisply ironed white shirts. At the table, tartare de boeuf is carefully prepared and crêpes theatrically flambéed. The signature gigot d’agneau with Rostang’s gratin dauphinois is part of a two-course set menu served at lunchtime in 45 minutes, a nod to travellers’ time constraints. Most clientèle of the Train Bleu restaurant, however, do not choose to board a train. Instead, the mix of tourists and locals come here to linger over a special occasion, to revel in the ambiance of a former time and to embark on imaginary voyages to the south.
Celebrities are frequent Train Bleu visitors and regulars have included François Mitterrand and Salvador Dali. Pricing is accordingly ‘reassuringly expensive’ even if time travel is arguably better value for money than a return train ticket to the south coast. The 2007 film Mr Bean’s Holiday has made the venue better known beyond France. Jean Rochefort’s fruits de mer head waiter cameo is a comic masterpiece available on YouTube. The Mr Bean movie is an unapologetic Francophile’s homage to France, ending with a celebratory all-cast song on the beach in Cannes.
On the beach at the 2025 MIPIM conference last week, pricing was undoubtedly expensive – but not reassuringly so – since the service at the cafés of Cannes was neither attentive nor welcoming as in the Gare de Lyon’s famous restaurant. Le Train Bleu, like Rowan Atkinson’s film, is a love letter to France showcasing some of the country’s very best features; an elegant past, high quality cuisine in the present and for the future, the intriguing possibilities of a TGV parked just beneath the windows. Le Train Bleu is – quite certainly – much more than just a restaurant.
