Scene: Un Restaurant à Paris

Two widowed octogenarians were snubbed twice but befriended thrice and had a night to remember at a fashionable restaurant inside the Palais Garnier Opera House.

My childhood pal, Val, and I are widowed octogenarians who have been traveling together since 1980, often to Paris. During the COVID shutdown, we waited impatiently for the French government to open their doors again and as soon as it felt safe, we planned a three-week trip for October 2021.

After so many months homebound, we decided to spend our Saturday nights “out.” A friend recommended CoCo — a  fashionable restaurant within the opulent Palais Garnier Opera House — which presented live music, late, on weekends. When I had difficulty making online reservations from the States, I emailed the request to the hotel’s concierge who booked the table.

I greeted the host, in French, when we arrived just before our 10 p.m. reservation and within moments, were led to a little dark table in the rear, behind a staircase and under a low ceiling facing the entry hall. It was decidedly not where we looked forward to sitting.

Val spoke: “No, this is not acceptable; we want a table in the main room.” I had time to muse while the host insisted that there were no other available tables: perhaps, this particularly swank venue wanted to protect their glamorous guests from seeing dames d’un certain age. Perhaps, her boss simply commanded: “Someone has to sit at that table, put them there!”

Who knows?

Eventually, the host agreed to look around and ventured into the main room. I followed and felt the full impact of the theatrically-inspired stage set that architect Odile Decq had created, within which I spotted three perfectly placed, vacant, cloth-covered tables.

Published Next Avenue