Launched during the Fall 2021 Paris Fashion Week, the Lantern Bar at the Ritz Paris hotel is one of Paris’s hottest new bar openings. We went with high expectations and were sorely disappointed. The cocktails were good (as they should be for € 32), but everyone was hyping the ambiance of this bar. And that was lacking.
The Lantern Bar feels like it was stuffed into a corner of the hotel as an afterthought and is located just adjacent to the famous Hemingway Bar. The people-watching in the line to get into the Hemingway Bar was more interesting than anything happening in the Lantern Bar. For the 20 minutes we waited for our cocktails, I thought, “I’d rather be in that line than trapped here.”
The bar is circular, centered in the room, and topped with a giant lantern shade. Its theme is based on Zodiac signs, so there are Zodiac signs carved out of the brass such that they project on the ceiling, and the Zodiac theme flows into the menu. The server suggested we choose the drink associated with our Zodiac sign or choose another “to be someone else for that evening.” A bit cheesy for Paris.
The service was incredibly slow for such a small bar. The lantern illuminates the bar in a ceremony each evening at 5:30pm along with music from one of our favorite French musicians Polo and Pan. However, the vibe of this bar just doesn’t make sense to us with their music.
Overall, we’d skip the Lantern Bar and head somewhere like the Bar Les Ambassadeurs at the Hotel de Crillon, which has a more sophisticated decor, better people-watching, and excellent live music from their in-house trio.