I used to be there when La Réserve Paris opened in 2015, and have returned on quite a few events since. I used to be enchanted from day one, and greater than a decade later, the spell stays unbroken. Outwardly, little about the resort has modified. Its major restaurant, Le Gabriel, has accrued first one, then two, and now three Michelin stars. Le Gaspard, its beautiful bar (which seats 18), has expanded barely into the streetside terrace. The foliage in the serene central courtyard has grown ever extra dense, therapies in the bijou basement spa ever extra subtle. With simply 40 rooms, La Réserve is by far the smallest of the metropolis’s super-elite palace-designated motels, and it retains a non-public high quality that you just would possibly describe as residential—notably in case you are accustomed to discreet residences which are swathed in silk, velvet, taffeta, and cordovan leather-based, with Versailles-like parquet flooring, gilded reliefs, and views throughout Paris from Notre-Dame to the Eiffel Tower. Owner Michel Reybier and designer Jacques Garcia have collaborated on a number of tasks (La Chartreuse de Cos d’Estournel, on the property of the similar title in Bordeaux, is one other superb instance). But La Réserve Paris is their masterpiece. —Steve King