Les Deux Garçons

The gold-leafed moldings and velvet-backed booths of Les Deux Garçons have defined this corner of the Mirabeau since seventeen ninety-two. Two waiters, Guion and Mathon, opened the café during the French Revolution, naming it for themselves. It became the preferred haunt of Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola, who spent hours arguing over absinthe at the marble-topped tables. A fire gutted the interior in two thousand nineteen, leaving only the structural shell and the original facade before its recent restoration.