Mama Shelter Bar

Address: 109 rue de Bagnolet, Paris, 75020, France
Tel: +33 (0)1 43 48 45 45
Website: view Mama Shelter Bar ’s website
Door: Open door
Style: Hotel bar
Food: Set menu

Review

Immerse yourself in Philippe Starck - so to speak. This hotel, somewhat far from centre of Paris, in the 20th District, looks completely average from outside, but inside the restaurant and bars you will find a maximalist cacophony of twentieth century interior design.

Chalked-on 'graffiti' covers every surface, including the ceiling, there are chandeliers made of children's swimming rubber rings, curtains printed with naked people, and staff dressed in dungarees worn jauntily across one shoulder. Diners sit at huge bench tables in armchairs and eat from huge pies designed to share.

There are two bars, one next to the kitchen (you can see it through the glass walls), and bedecked in hundreds of kitchen implements, the bar itself beautifully underlit and seating a handful and the main island bar around which the main action takes place on busy nights.

And boy does it get busy, to the extent that speed appears to have taken over as the main priority in bar service - our last drink there, a classic champagne cocktail, was quite literally thrown together in 15 seconds flat and unfortunately tasted as if it had been.