You can now enter a London portal to Paris to drink like it’s 1896
Immersive experience cabaret company The Lost Estate is inviting audiences to an unmarked door in London to travel back in time to the heart of Montmartre in 1896 to drink and dine.
The event. named Chat Noir, is set to open this month at The Lost Estate’s West London home and is the latest creation from the company behind live performances such as The Great Christmas Feast and 58th Street.
Attendees will be transported to the bohemian climes of Montmartre during the 1890s and, at the centre of the story stands Rodolphe Salis – the real-life proprietor of Le Chat Noir and architect of its most notorious cabarets – where he prepares what is being termed as “a celebration like no other”.
The role of Salis, played by cabaret stalwart Joe Morrose, drives the tone of the event as he rallies people around him and performs as “a man who has summoned the greatest artists of his age”.
Drinks choice curation
Speaking to the drinks business, The Lost Estate co-founder and hospitality creative director Rowan Bell said: “Our starting point for the cocktail list was historical plausibility rather than strict recreation. We looked at what would actually have been available in Paris in the 1890s (eg. vermouths, quinquinas, early liqueurs, absinthe, cobblers, crustas and wine-led aperitifs) and built from there. The idea of a cocktail list as we understand it today wasn’t common in France, but we felt we had some artistic license given we’re recreating one of the most forward-looking avant-garde clubs in the world at the time.”
Bell explained that “in order to lend a helping hand to a modern audience, we retained some of the structure of a contemporary menu but used ingredients and flavour profiles rooted in Belle Époque France. This meant prioritising brightness, botanicals, anise-forward flavour profiles etc while ensuring each drink felt understandable to a modern audience”.
‘Drinks feel like a believable extension of the world guests step into’
Bell told db that the team at The Lost Estate also aims to “avoid unrealistic theatricality and the sense of the menu being themed”. He highlighted that “the aim is not to create ‘fantasy 19th century Paris’ but to make the drinks feel like a believable extension of the world guests step into”.
Bell also hinted that the experience includes historic recipes and ingredients from Belle Époque cabarets and cafés that have been revived.
For instance, Bell explained: “We’ve included an original 19th-century recipe for the Corpse Reviver [which features] 11 ingredients, and we’ve also developed Parisian variants of classic drinks that would plausibly have appeared at the time. For example, the Crusta is adapted with anisette to reflect the absinthe culture of the time and a Parisian julep incorporates Chartreuse.”
Hypocras and absinthe
He added: “We also created an interpretation of hypocras – a spiced wine drink with ancient origins – it was part of Rudolphe Salis’s original vision for the club – as a place where you drank hypocras and Absinthe whilst enjoying extraordinary art. We serve it chilled, in a welcome-drink style.”
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According to Bell: “Absinthe was totally central to the cafe culture of the time and so has a prime place in the menu”.
He revealed: “We have a ‘Green Hour’ during the show where we bring out traditional absinthe fountains for guests. We also serve it as frappé and by the glass – with a list of absinthes to choose from (they actually vary quite a bit in taste profile).”
Bell told db that “alongside the cocktails and absinthe, the wine list was curated using historical French wine lists from the late 19th century as a starting point, prioritising regions, styles etc that would have been familiar at the time”. To give the experience more of a sense of the time, Bell insisted that The Lost Estate also offers “all the traditional formats that would have been available” such as “carafes, half carafes, half bottles [and] magnums”.
As part of the experience, The Lost Estate revealed that there would be magicians, dancers, mime artists and the club’s house band and the business has named Piper-Heidsieck as its Champagne partner. Added to this, a troupe of musicians, led by the young Erik Satie, have joined Satie along with the band Les Enfants Vagabondes which are on hand to perform arrangements of French late-Romantic masterpieces by The Lost Estate’s composer-in-residence, Steffan Rees.
Champagne and absinthe pouring
As the evening unfolds, performances are set to spill from stage to floor with Champagne and absinthe pouring and musicians roaming between tables. The experience will also centre around the secret suppers of Paris’s aristocrats and guests are set to drink and dine on classic haute cuisine dishes that inspired dishes such as Coq au vin and crème brûlée.
The Lost Estate co-founder William Kunhardt said: “Every experience by The Lost Estate begins the same way – an obsession with a moment in time when art, hospitality, and visionary people collided to create an inflection point in culture.”
‘Dining, drinking and artistic freedom became one’
Kunhardt explained that “Chat Noir is the expression of our latest obsession: the bohemian subculture of 1890s Paris, the dawning of French haute cuisine, and amidst it all the impresario Rodolphe Salis with his masterpiece, Le Chat Noir.”
According to Kunhardt: “It was the world’s first cabaret–a nightclub where great French artists gathered to share and experiment, where every layer of Parisian society came to be entertained, provoked, and liberated. Dining, drinking, and artistic freedom became one. A movement was born that would change global culture forever. What a moment to bring back to life – to give people the chance to travel back in time and step inside this extraordinary nocturnal world, indulge utterly and live out one of the most explosive, daring and hedonistic moments in European cultural history.”
To find out more or to buy tickets visit the Chat Noir website. Doors open and 6pm for evening performances that take place from 7pm, while matinees open doors at 12 noon from Tuesday to Sunday and begin at 1pm.
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