Le Poisson Volant opens as a restaurant that turns into a club

Le Poisson Volant opens this October in Paris's 11th arrondissement, a restaurant from Le Cornichon's founders that turns into a nightclub after 11pm.

The address, 5 Rue Marguerite Moret, previously housed L'International, a long-running music venue. Bertrand Chauveau and Paul Henri, who built Le Cornichon into one of the neighbourhood's busiest tables, are behind the new project.

Chauveau runs the kitchen with chef Yanxin Yin, who trained in Xi'an and Lanzhou before working at Tsingtao. Her background in northern and western Chinese cooking shapes a menu built around sharing plates rather than a single regional script.

Dinner service that does not end so much as change its lighting.

Dinner service runs in the usual way, then the room shifts after 11pm, when tables clear and the space becomes a club, with the kitchen staying open for late orders rather than closing at the changeover.

The format follows a pattern Chauveau and Henri know well from Le Cornichon, pairing serious cooking with a looser, later-hours crowd rather than treating the two as separate businesses stacked in one address.

An exact opening date has not been confirmed; reporting from Sortiraparis and Wallpaper both place the launch within October.

A late kitchen, not a last call

Restaurants that stay open past midnight remain the exception in Paris, where most kitchens close service by 10.30pm or 11pm. Le Poisson Volant's bet is that keeping food running into the club hours gives it an edge over venues that drop food entirely once the DJ starts.

It adds to a run of openings this autumn that blur restaurant and nightlife formats, as Paris operators look for ways to keep spend going for longer rather than opening a second venue for a different hour of the night.

The 11th keeps its edge

The 11th arrondissement has built its reputation on exactly this kind of crossover, from natural wine bars that double as listening rooms to kitchens that keep running long after the plates stop turning. Anne-Sophie Pic's own Paris opening chose the quieter register of the Fondation Cartier this autumn, a reminder of how wide the city's range runs right now.

Le Poisson Volant opens into that range rather than against it, betting that Chauveau and Henri's following from Le Cornichon will follow them past dinner and into the night.