Paris can boast more than its fair share of the great restaurants of the world but, until recently, it was more or less a wasteland for anybody who wanted to eat good Chinese food.
Not any more. In September, amid much fanfare, the Shangri-La Paris opened the first Shang Palace restaurant in Europe.
It is also, according to general manager Alain Borgers, 'the first Chinese fine-dining restaurant of this hotel category in France', and already the Parisians are developing a taste for Cantonese cuisine. Alain Ducasse likes to drop in for dim sum.
Ducasse is only one of a number of famous faces frequenting the hotel. You know for sure that you are about to enter one of the places to be seen in the city when you step aside at the entrance to make way for Charlotte Rampling.
The Shangri-La Paris has been open for almost exactly a year (December 17, 2010) and, in a city which is definitely not short of great hotels, has still managed to generate a significant buzz.
There are a number of reasons for this. One is the building and its history. Located on Avenue d'Iena, just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, the hotel was originally constructed between 1892 and 1896 as a palace for Prince Roland Bonaparte - great nephew of Napoleon - who lived there until his death in 1924.