The Verdict
LA FONTAINE DE MARS has been on the Rue Saint-Dominique since 1908, serving the 7th arrondissement's diplomatic and residential community with the classic cuisine of France's south-west — the cassoulet from Castelnaudary, the duck confit from the Landes, the foie gras from Gascony — in a room whose red-and-white checked tablecloths and the painted fountain on the terrace have been essentially unchanged across 116 years of continuous operation.
The specific event that the restaurant is now most associated with — Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy's joint dinner here in 2009 during the American president's Paris state visit — communicates what the neighbourhood and the regular clientele already knew: that La Fontaine de Mars represents the 7th arrondissement's specific form of institutional French hospitality, where the cassoulet and the confit are served with the same quality as the wine and in the same spirit as the neighbourhood's political history.
The south-west French menu at La Fontaine de Mars is the most accessible expression of the Gascony and Languedoc culinary traditions available in the 7th arrondissement: the cassoulet with its specific combination of duck, pork, and white beans enriched by days of cooking; the duck confit whose fat-preserved preparation produces the specific combination of crispy skin and tender flesh; and the foie gras that the region considers its primary culinary contribution to the world.
Why It Works for Closing a Deal
La Fontaine de Mars communicates what a century of 7th arrondissement diplomatic entertaining has always communicated: that the south-west French kitchen, properly executed, is France's most convivial culinary tradition, and that convivial meals close deals in Paris more effectively than ceremonial ones. The Obama-Sarkozy precedent is not irrelevant.
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