Restaurant Prunier
Restaurant Prunier is a Paris Seafood Restaurant landmark located in the 16 arrondissement. Restaurant Prunier is open at 16 avenue Victor Hugo in the 16th arrondissement, seven days a week: the dining room serves 12:00 to 14:30 and 19:00 to 23:30, and the ground-floor caviar bar runs continuously from 12:00 until 2:00 in the morning. […]
Restaurant Prunier is a Paris Seafood Restaurant landmark located in the 16 arrondissement.
Restaurant Prunier is open at 16 avenue Victor Hugo in the 16th arrondissement, seven days a week: the dining room serves 12:00 to 14:30 and 19:00 to 23:30, and the ground-floor caviar bar runs continuously from 12:00 until 2:00 in the morning. The kitchen has been led by chef Romain Fornell since the house reopened in September 2025 under Lapérouse Holding, with interiors reworked by Lázaro Rosa-Violán. Many English-language listings still credit Yannick Alléno, who ran the menu during the 2024 centenary year; that is out of date. A two-course set lunch is 48 €, Prunier's own caviars start around 80 € for 30 g at the bar, and the building itself has been a listed historic monument since 11 July 1989. Reservations go through the house's booking system or by phone on +33 1 44 17 35 85.
Address | 16 avenue Victor Hugo, 75016 Paris (corner of 1 rue de Traktir) |
Nearest metro | Charles de Gaulle – Étoile (lines 1, 2, 6, RER A); Victor Hugo (line 2) |
Phone | +33 1 44 17 35 85 |
Restaurant hours | Every day, 12:00–14:30 and 19:00–23:30 |
Bar hours | Every day, 12:00–02:00, continuous service |
Chef | Romain Fornell (since the September 2025 reopening) |
Interior architect, 2025 | Lázaro Rosa-Violán |
Original architect | Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, 1925 |
Heritage status | Inscribed monument historique, 11 July 1989 (ref. PA00086711) |
Set lunch | 48 € for two courses |
Caviar, entry level | From 80 € per 30 g at the bar, from 90 € per 30 g in the restaurant |
Private rooms | Salon Pierre Bergé and La Rotonde, seated events from 10 people |
Parking | Valet service |
Is Restaurant Prunier open, and who runs the kitchen in 2026?
Prunier is open and trading every day of the week. The chef is Romain Fornell, a Michelin-starred cook based in Barcelona, and his name appears on the June 2026 carte published by the restaurant. He took over when the house reopened in September 2025 after several months of refurbishment, following its acquisition by Lapérouse Holding, the group led by Benjamin Patou that also owns Lapérouse and Lafayette's.
This matters because the search results for Prunier are currently unreliable on the point. Several well-regarded English-language guides, along with the restaurant's own Tripadvisor listing name, still describe the kitchen as belonging to Yannick Alléno. Alléno did write the menu, and the association was accurate through the 2024 centenary of the Victor Hugo house. It is no longer the arrangement. If a booking page or review promises an Alléno menu in 2026, it has not been updated.
Where exactly is Prunier, and how do you reach it?
The restaurant occupies the corner of 16 avenue Victor Hugo and 1 rue de Traktir, about 400 metres down the avenue from the Arc de Triomphe. Charles de Gaulle – Étoile is the closest interchange, served by metro lines 1, 2 and 6 and by RER A; Victor Hugo on line 2 is one stop further out and drops you almost at the door. The house offers a valet service, which is worth knowing because on-street parking on this stretch of the avenue is scarce.
Avenue Victor Hugo is one of the twelve avenues radiating from the Étoile, and the walk from the Arc de Triomphe takes about five minutes. If you are building a day around the western end of the city, the restaurant sits within easy reach of the monuments covered in our guide to the most famous historical landmarks in Paris, and the avenue itself features in our roundup of the best streets in Paris.
What does it actually cost to eat at Prunier?
The cheapest way in is the set lunch at 48 € for two courses, either starter and main or main and dessert. From there the range is wide: a plate of oysters starts at 5,80 € each at the bar, while a 250 g tin of Beluga is 5 000 €. All prices below are taken from the restaurant's published June 2026 carte and its bar menu, and are quoted prix nets TTC, meaning tax and service are already included.
Item | Price | Where |
Set lunch, two courses | 48 € | Restaurant |
Oyster, L'Étoile d'Or no. 3, each | 5,80 € bar / 6,50 € restaurant | Both |
Plateau Prunier (oysters, prawns, langoustines, whelks) | 70 € | Restaurant |
Plateau Royal, for two, with whole lobster | 190 € | Restaurant |
Christian Dior egg, the house signature | 65 € restaurant / 62 € bar | Both |
Sole, grilled or meunière, 1 kg | 190 € | Restaurant |
Whole turbot, 1,2 kg | 216 € | Restaurant |
Cheeseburger with fries | 36 € | Restaurant |
Prunier caviar, 30 g | From 80 € bar / from 90 € restaurant | Both |
Kaluga caviar, 30 g | 300 € | Bar |
Beluga caviar, 30 g / 250 g | 600 € / 5 000 € | Both |
Signature cocktails | 23 € to 71 € | Bar |
Champagne by the glass | 26 € (Moët) to 44 € (Ruinart Blanc de Blancs) | Bar |
A practical read of that table: two people can eat a proper seafood lunch here for around 100 € without touching caviar, and can spend ten times that if they do. If you are working out what your budget converts to before you arrive, our explainer on the currency France uses covers the euro and card acceptance.
What is the difference between the bar and the restaurant?
They are two distinct rooms with different menus, different hours and different prices. The ground-floor bar keeps the oyster counters and the gilded carved-wood bar, serves continuously from noon to 2:00 in the morning, and is the room to use for a late lunch, an early dinner, a plate of caviar at an odd hour or a cocktail. The restaurant is upstairs, opens only for the two service windows, and is the quieter, more formal room, built around grilled fish, shellfish and the caviar selection.
The bar menu is generally a few euros cheaper on the same or similar items, which is why the caviar entry price differs between the two rooms. The bar also carries things the restaurant does not, including Kaluga caviar and a longer list of smoked fish.
Why is Prunier a listed historic monument?
The restaurant was inscribed on the list of monuments historiques by an arrêté dated 11 July 1989, under reference PA00086711 in the Ministry of Culture's Mérimée database. The protection covers the restaurant premises, and the site had already been an inscribed site since 6 August 1975.
One point of precision is worth making, because the house itself blurs it. Prunier's own menus describe the restaurant as classé aux Monuments Historiques. The official record uses the weaker of the two French protection levels, inscrit rather than classé. Both are real legal protections and both restrict what can be altered; classé is the higher tier. If you see the building described as classified, that is the marketing phrasing rather than the arrêté.
Who designed the Art Deco interior?
The building was constructed in 1925 by the architect Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, working with the designer Léon Carrière. The Monuments historiques record names three further contributors: Paul Binet for the engraved glass, the sculptor Le Bourgeois for the gilded metal panels, and the mosaicist Auguste Labouret for the facade and for the glass-paste floor, laid by the Briard firm. The blue mosaic frontage, with its marine motifs, is Labouret's work and is the element most visitors photograph.
The original brief was narrower than the restaurant it became. The official record describes it as conceived as a bar de dégustation for "everything that comes from the sea". The premises were rehabilitated in 1993 by the architect Yves Boucharlat, and again in 2025 by Lázaro Rosa-Violán for the current owners.
How old is Prunier, and what happened in 1872, 1924 and 2025?
The house dates to 1872, when Alfred Prunier and his wife Catherine opened a seafood restaurant on rue Duphot, near the Madeleine. The company became the first French caviar producer in 1921. Alfred's son Émile opened the Victor Hugo house, originally called Prunier-Traktir, in 1924, and it drew F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway among others. Alfred died in 1925 and his daughter Simone took over, later opening a Prunier in London.
There is a small dating discrepancy worth flagging: the house consistently markets the Victor Hugo address as trading "since 1924", while the Monuments historiques record dates the building's construction campaign to 1925. Both can be true if the business opened before the building work was signed off, but the two numbers do not come from the same source and should not be treated as interchangeable.
In the modern era, Pierre Bergé, co-founder of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house, was the owner whose name is still attached to one of the private salons. In 2021 the Swiss group OLMA Luxury Holdings took a controlling stake in Caviar House & Prunier Group, buying out the 53 percent previously held through Saint Laurent and Bergé interests. The restaurant reopened in October 2022, then in June 2023 all Prunier restaurant activity was consolidated at Victor Hugo. In the summer of 2025 the restaurant itself passed to Lapérouse Holding, and it reopened that September with Romain Fornell in the kitchen.
Where does Prunier caviar come from?
Prunier caviar is French, produced and finished at the Prunier Manufacture in Aquitaine. The farm sits on the River Isle at Montpon-Ménestérol in the Dordogne, was among the first sturgeon farms in the world when it started in 1990, and in 1994 became the first producer to bring farmed-sturgeon caviar to market. The restaurant serves Baeri and Osciètre from that operation, alongside Caviar House labels such as Kaluga and Beluga which are not Prunier's own production.
A correction to a claim that circulates about this restaurant, including in an earlier version of this page: Prunier's farm is not Caviar de Neuvic. Caviar de Neuvic is a separate Dordogne house, founded by Laurent Deverlanges and known for organic-certified caviar. The two businesses were combined under a French holding company, Groupe Prunier, from 2023 onward, but they remain distinct producers with distinct products, and Neuvic is not the source of the caviar Prunier has farmed since 1990.
Is this the same place as Café Prunier at the Madeleine?
No. Prunier Madeleine, at 15 place de la Madeleine in the 8th arrondissement, is a boutique. Prunier moved all of its restaurant activity to the Victor Hugo address in June 2023, so the Madeleine site sells caviar, smoked salmon and seafood delicatessen to take away rather than serving a full meal. Older reviews and guidebooks describing lunch at Café Prunier are describing an arrangement that ended.
Turning up at the Madeleine expecting a table is the single most common Prunier mistake we see repeated in listings. The two addresses are about 3 km apart and on different metro lines.
Mistakes to avoid when booking Prunier
- Booking on the strength of an Alléno menu. The chef changed in September 2025 and a good deal of the English-language web has not caught up.
- Going to the Madeleine address for dinner. Since June 2023 that site is a boutique only.
- Assuming the bar and the restaurant are interchangeable. They have different menus, different prices and very different hours, and the bar is the only option outside the two service windows.
- Budgeting from the caviar prices alone. The 48 € set lunch and the 36 € cheeseburger sit on the same premises as a 5 000 € tin, so the room is far more approachable than its reputation suggests if you order accordingly.
- Expecting service to be added at the end. French menus here are quoted net of tax and service, so the number on the carte is the number you pay.
Who is Prunier actually for?
Prunier suits three visitors particularly well. Anyone interested in 1920s Paris interiors gets a protected Art Deco room they can sit in rather than queue to photograph, which is rare. Anyone who wants to try good French caviar without buying a tin can order 30 g at the bar and stop there. And anyone who wants a formal Paris dinner near the Arc de Triomphe without a months-long reservation battle will find this considerably easier to book than the city's most contested tables.
It suits you less well if you want value-driven seafood, or a relaxed room. For the broader range of options across the city, from street food upward, see our guide to the best places to eat in Paris. If you are pairing the meal with a day trip, our list of towns and cities near Paris covers what is reachable by train.
Frequently asked questions about Restaurant Prunier
Does Prunier open on Sundays?
Yes. The restaurant and the bar both open seven days a week. The restaurant serves 12:00 to 14:30 and 19:00 to 23:30; the bar runs from 12:00 to 2:00 the following morning without a break.
Do you need a reservation at Prunier?
A reservation is advisable for the upstairs restaurant and is taken through the house's online booking system or on +33 1 44 17 35 85. The ground-floor bar is more forgiving of walk-ins, particularly outside the classic lunch and dinner peaks.
What is the dress code?
Prunier does not publish a dress code. The upstairs restaurant is a formal dining room in a protected historic interior, so smart dress is the sensible default; the bar is more relaxed.
What is the Christian Dior egg?
It is the house signature dish, an egg preparation served with caviar, priced at 65 € on the restaurant carte and 62 € on the bar menu as of the 2026 menus.
Can you hire Prunier for a private event?
Yes. The house offers two private salons, named Pierre Bergé and La Rotonde, as well as full buyout. Seated meals are taken from ten people upward, and enquiries go through the restaurant's events address.
Yes, through ownership. Since 2025 Prunier belongs to Lapérouse Holding, which also owns Lapérouse at 51 quai des Grands Augustins in the 6th and Lafayette's at 8 rue d'Anjou in the 8th. The Prunier menu points guests to both.
Can you buy Prunier caviar to take home?
Yes, from the Prunier boutique at 15 place de la Madeleine in the 8th arrondissement, or from the house's online shop. Caviar House distributes Prunier caviar through more than 40 outlets worldwide.
Sources and how this page was checked
Hours, chef, private-room names, contact details and every price on this page were taken on 3 August 2026 from Prunier's own restaurant site and from the PDFs it publishes there: the restaurant carte dated June 2026, the set-lunch menu dated May 2026 and the bar menu dated October 2025. Heritage facts, the architect attributions and the protection date come from the French Ministry of Culture's Mérimée record PA00086711. Ownership history was checked against the acquisition announcements from OLMA Luxury Holdings and reporting on the 2025 change of hands. Caviar production details come from Prunier's Manufacture pages.
Four claims that appeared in the previous version of this page were removed because they could not be supported: that Yannick Alléno is the current chef, that the September 2025 reopening was carried out by OLMA Luxury Holdings, that Alexey Brodovitch designed the interior, and that Prunier's caviar farm is Caviar de Neuvic. The architect's name was also corrected from "Bouleau" to Boileau, and the heritage status from classified to inscribed. No first-hand dining experience is claimed anywhere on this page.
Last updated 3 August 2026. Restaurant hours, menus and prices change; the June 2026 carte was the current published menu at the time of writing. Confirm directly with the restaurant before travelling.