There are rooms in Paris the place the air feels gilded, and for greater than three many years, one such room was Davé. Located on Rue de Richelieu, the Chinese language restaurant turned town’s unofficial salon of the evening and a well-liked superstar hang-out, the place the spare ribs have been sticky and the gossip was scorching.
Opened in 1982 by Tai “Davé” Cheung, the menuless, velvet curtained restaurant, break up in half by a tropical fish tank, attracted a constellation of artists, designers, and different fabulous individuals—although the door was all the time affixed with a “COMPLET” signal. Helmut and June Newton, Grace Coddington, Francis Ford Coppola, Allen Ginsberg, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, and Kate Moss all discovered their option to tables at Davé, as did Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst (with ciggies in hand), the Olsen twins, and Linda Evangelista and Kyle MacLachlan.
Visitors would dine on Vietnamese spring rolls and nước chấm, spare ribs, Peking duck, salt and pepper shrimp, and sliced up mango. “The People and Anglo-Saxons cherished the ribs,” Cheung says. He was additionally joyful to accommodate much less standard tastes—like when the legendary producer Jean-Pierre Rassam got here along with his prepare dinner and his personal meals. “They have been purported to have dinner at dwelling however modified their thoughts on the final minute. They didn’t wish to waste it…it made me chortle,” Cheung recollects. “I introduced out some plates and supplied to reheat every part. I performed alongside.”
Davé and his cat Momo.Picture: Davé, courtesy of IDEA
