Within the Hôtel de Crillon, which was built in 1758, Les Ambassadeurs operated as a restaurant since the mid-19th century. It reached its peak of fame as a restaurant and nightclub (a café-concert) in the last three decades of the 19th century.
Always a center of entertainment for the aristocracy, in the 1870s it also became a regular destination of some of the best known figures of art and the demi-monde. Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec portrayed visitors at the night club, and Aristide Bruant performed there.
“It was decorated in an 18th-century rococo style, redesigned by Sybille de Margérie with furnishings by Sonia Rykiel.”
Following a renovation of the hotel in 1981–85, the restaurant occupied a former private ballroom with windows looking out on the Place de la Concorde, a few hundred meters from the Palais Garnier.
Les Ambassadeurs had two Michelin stars. In the last decade of its operation, chef was Dominique Bouchet followed by Jean-François Piège and finally when the hotel closed in 2013 for an extended renovation, Christopher Hache.
In 2017 Hache opened a smaller restaurant, L'Écrin, within the renovated hotel; the former space of Les Ambassadeurs became a bar.
