Maison Fournaise, My Favorite Restaurant in Paris is a Victim of COVID

 

Last month when I visited Paris, I took the suburban train to Chatou to visit a restaurant that had closed in March of 2020 and never reopened.  That restaurant is Maison Fournaise. It is located on an island in the Seine northwest of Paris on a narrow island called Ile des impressionistes. There is a small impressionist art museum on the island that is still open, but Maison Fournaise closed after being in business from 1857 to 1906 as a restaurant and boat rental business, then reopened in 1990 closing again in 2020.

In its first life, Maison Fournaise drinking spot for artists who would become some of the most famous French impressionists. Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted "The Boating Party" on the porch at Maison Fournaise.  The scene became the business card and symbol of the restaurant.  

Inside the restaurant are several sketches on the walls, carefully covered in lucite.  The sketches were caricatures done by Henri Matisse.  The owner told me that Matisse drank too much and was in love with one of the bar maids. He would come to the bar, flirt with the bar maid, and drink too much.  When he drank more than he could pay for, he paid his bar tab with sketches of prominent customers.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted "The Boating Party" 

on the porch at Maison Fournaise. 

I first learned about the restaurant in the late 1990s from a colleague, Alain Mathurin, who showed me several restaurants where I could host business meetings and even impress French guests. Twice I rented the same porch for a business meeting. At each event one of the French guests said they had lived in Paris all their lives and never heard of Maison Fournaise.

When I visited recently the porch that was the scene of "The Boating Party" was stripped of furniture. Some volunteers are preserving the building and hoping the restaurant has a third life. 

Even on a cold, gray day in February, the area is lovely.  The next island to the south, around the bend of the Seine, is the setting for one of Guy de Maupassant's sad love stories.  

On a summer evening with a late sunset, on the porch, watching barges and pleasure boats slip silently past, there could hardly be a better place in the world for dinner.  I hope the restaurant somehow returns. It is a victim of COVID and a loss mourned by many, including me. 

Posts about traveling in France and neighboring countries in February 2022:

My favorite restaurant is a victim of COVID.

The Museum of the Great War.

The Waterloo Battlefield.

The Red Baron Memorial.

Chartres Cathedral.

High Performance Cars in a garage in Versailles.

Talking about Fathers and Careers at lunch.