If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR218.18), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Talk about growing trends – at L’Eldorado hotel in Paris, the greenery and flowers that enliven its secret jardin (a rare thing in Paris, and perfect for cocktails and lingering meals) appear to have run rampant throughout its restaurant, bar and rooms too, with fleur-flaunting handpainted and House of Hackney wallpapers coating the walls and ceilings, and vines threaded through chandeliers. But it’s not just botanicals that make this an eccentrically stylish stay, with furnishings from various eras, a sociable alfresco scene and a lively 17th arrondissement locale.
Noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £205.53 (€240), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €8.13 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include a breakfast composed of purely French produce.
Also
The two Jardins rooms are specially adapted for wheelchair-users and most of the public areas are accessible, with a lift to rooms. If you have mobility issues, be sure to let the hotel know in advance, as some rooms are unsuitable.
At the hotel
Gardens and pavilion, dining room and small library, charged laundry service (on request), and free WiFi. In rooms: air-conditioning, LCD TV, minibar, free coffee- and tea-making kit, free bottled water, Dyson hair-dryer, bathrobes, and custom bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Maximalism is truly taken to ‘the max’ here, with florid florals and mix-and-match furnishings from various eras (Victorian hangings, Twenties lights, Sixties latticework cabinets), and patterned-velvet wallcoverings and House of Hackney wallpapers that sometimes envelop the ceilings, too. Rooms and suites from the Terrace up all have outdoor space, for a breather if the busyness overwhelms.
Packing tips
A basket big enough for a bouquet, baguettes and finds from the 17th’s boutiques.
Also
The hotel also has a cosy hidey-hole in the garden within which you’ll find a dining room-cum-library for meetings or private dinners.
You’re surrounded by flowers and botanicals wherever you are in the hotel, but we prefer the real fragrant plantings and tall jungly trees on the terrace – don’t worry, there are pinwheel-style parasols if it starts to shower.
Dress Code
Patterns may cause a chameleon-like effect here, so maybe go against the grain in crisp whites or tailored taupes to stand out.
Hotel restaurant
L’Eldorado’s restaurant offers the rare opportunity to dine amid palms, hydrangeas, roses and wisteria in its secret (but not for long) garden. The indoor dining space is rather flowery too, with its botanical prints and mural wallpapers, colourful plates on display and vine-entwined chandeliers; and large windows bring the outside in as well. The service might be silver and the wait staff well-attired, but dining is fairly casual, with small plates (eggs mimosa, trout rillettes, oysters, seasoned snails…) and more substantial – largely sea-to-plate – eats: sea-bass fillet in parsley sauce; sole meunière; vol-au-vents stuffed with clams, asparagus and lemon; beetroot tartare, plus fillet steak with dauphinoise potatoes, lemon-y chicken and mushroom-stuffed omelettes. To follow, think mille-feuille, clafoutis, coupes and glaces.
Hotel bar
Classic cocktails, spritzes, spiced or frozen margaritas, and wines from France’s most fertile terroirs are also served in the dining room or garden.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 7am to 11am, lunch from noon to 3pm, and dinner from 7pm to midnight.
Room service
In-room dining is available when the restaurant is open, from 11am to midnight.
L’Eldorado is on Rue des Dames in the bohemian Batignolles neighbourhood of Paris’ gritty yet hip 17th arrondissement.
Planes
Charles de Gaulle Airport is a 30-minute drive away in clear traffic, and Orly around 40 minutes. Hotel staff can help to arrange transfers from €60 one-way.
Trains
The Gares du Nord (for Eurostar arrivals) and de l’Est are both a 15-minute drive away. And, La Fourche (on Line 13) and Place de Clichy (on Lines 2 and 13) are your closest Metro stops.
Automobiles
Paris is really built more for walking, especially in the 17th’s tangle of lively streets. But – if you must drive – there’s charged parking on Rue des Batignolles close by.
Worth getting out of bed for
Yes, Eldorado was the mythical lost city of gold, but the treasure you’ll find here is more organic: an exquisitely cultivated city garden with tall palms, perfumed with campanula, hydrangea, camellias and roses. It whisks you away from the bohemian bustle of the surrounding Batignolles quarter, which sits close enough to reach Paris’s most iconic sights via a short taxi or Metro ride, or leisurely stroll; but far enough to feel like you’re living in the ‘real’ Paris. It’s an interesting tangle of streets with enough to tempt you from your leafy haven. Close by is the Place de Clichy, a point where four arrondissements meet. Around here you’ll find arthouse intrigues at the Pathé Cinema and Cinema des Cinéastes, plus the No.Pi gig venue and L'Européen Theatre; and the Moulin Rouge is a short can-can away from here. And the show goes on with the Grande Happy Comedy club (40 Rue de Clichy), La Bruyère Theatre, Paris Theatre, and Mogador Theatre. The Musée de la Vie Romantique is set in Dutch painter Ary Scheffer’s 19th-century manor, where the likes of George Sand, Liszt, Delacroix and Dickens used to meet for Friday-evening salons. And there’s plenty of artistic life throughout the neighbourhood these days too, with the likes of Le Bal (a multidisciplinary space), Truffaut Gallery and Hyperstructure Arts (14 Place Charles Fillion). Less ‘lively’ but still interesting is the Montmartre Cemetery, which has some intriguing graves (including those of Stendhal and Zola). Or for less melancholic greenery, head north to the Parc Clichy-Batignolles – Martin Luther King (once part of the city’s Olympics bid), or west to Parc Monceau. Or sequester yourself away with a cocktail and a battered book in the hotel’s leafy hideout.
Local restaurants
The hotel’s restaurant is a contender for one of the area’s coolest – it’s certainly flamboyant enough to stand out. But the Batignolles heaves with eateries to try. Coretta (closed throughout August) is a cool modern space with equally forward-thinking dishes, such as tuna with beetroot ravioli, raspberries and za’atar; or grilled trout with marbled leeks, nori, apricot and smoked potatoes. Le Bouclard is somewhat more traditional, all wood and walls lined with knick-knacks, and a menu of onion soup, snails, chicken in tarragon and mustard cream, Chateaubriand, and Grand Marnier-soaked crème brûlée. And, Le Costaud des Batignolles is a quirky mix of art gallery and eatery, with paintings splashed all over the walls and sculptures propped around the dining space, and creative plates, too: salmon in a mango and saffron sauce with nashi pear; burrata with apple, vanilla-infused oil and truffle; seasonal Scottish scallops drizzled in hazelnut butter, with tonka bean.
Local cafés
At Place de Clichy, Le Petit Poucet is well positioned for people-watching. And, its menu has an appealing selection of small plats, burgers and croques, plus a hearty brunch. Wepler is a 19th-century brasserie with traditional interiors (leather banquettes, mirrored walls); come for oysters and seafood or to pick at charcuterie and cheeses.
Local bars
Prop up the bar with an amaretto sour or chilled glass of rosé at nearby Le Comptoir des Batignolles, a friendly space where live music sometimes plays.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this full of fleurs hotel in Paris’s hip 17th arrondissement and unpacked their bouquets and playbills, a full account of their smell-the-roses break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside L’Eldorado in Paris…
Sure, you can wander the Tuileries, picnic in Parc Monceau, bust out of the city to the Bois de Boulogne, or sneak a few vins in one of the many trim grassy squares dotted about, but it’s rare that a hotel has enough elbow room for a green space all of its own. As such, boutique hotel L’Eldorado is as rare a find as its namesake, even if it’s more green than gold. Or rather, the whole rainbow of colours: in its garden grows roses, hydrangeas and more, alongside stately palms; and within, handpainted House of Hackney wallpapers coat each room, the restaurant and bar areas with lavish prints. Add vintage finds from each era after Victorian, a sociable atmosphere and cool city ’hood, and you indeed have a stay that’ll grow on you.
