Bouillon Chartier, or simply Chartier, is a “bouillon” restaurant in Paris founded in 1896, located in the 9th arrondissement and classified as a monument historique since 1989.
The restaurant was created in 1896 by two brothers, Frédéric and Camille Chartier, in a building resembling a railway station concourse. The long Belle Époque dining room has a high ceiling supported by large columns which allows for a mezzanine, where service is also provided.
It opened with the name “Le Bouillon” originally a cheap workers’ eatery that served stew, near the Grands Boulevards, the Hôtel Drouot, the Musée Grévin, and the Palais de la Bourse. The restaurant has had only four owners since opening.
The restaurant is open 365 days a year with a menu offering traditional French cuisine. The table service is provided by waiting staff dressed in the traditional rondin, a tight-fitting black waistcoat with multiple pockets and a long white apron.
The restaurant’s popularity leads to lines in the courtyard or under the porch and sometimes on the sidewalk outside. Tables are shared between strangers. The bill is written directly on the disposable paper tablecloth at the end of the meal. Serving stops at 11:30 PM.
Le Relais de l’Entrecote started in 1959, when Paul Gineste de Saurs purchased an Italian restaurant called Le Relais de Venise (the Venice Inn) in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, near Porte Maillot. A descendant of the Gineste de Saurs family in southern France, he was seeking to establish an assured market for the wines produced by the family’s Château de Saurs winery in Lisle-sur-Tarn, 50 kilometres northeast of Toulouse.
Following the death of Paul Gineste de Saurs in 1966, three of his children carried on in the business. One of them was the daughter, Marie-Paule Burrus, who adopted the name Le Relais de l’Entrecôte for her group of restaurants. Her branch of the family has four locations of its own, three in Paris and one in Geneva, as well as seven others operating under licence, two in Beirut run by Boubess Group, and one each in Kuwait City, Doha, Dubai, Riyadh, and Hong Kong. A location operating under licence opened in West Hollywood (Greater Los Angeles) in 2016 and closed in 2017.
Since 1981, Marie-Paule Burrus has also headed the family’s Château de Saurs winery with her husband, Yves Burrus, a scion of Switzerland’s Burrus family of industrialists.