Inside our Paris City Guide: one of Cabana's favorite fabled shops

PLACES & SPACES | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA

“Let them eat cake”—the famous, oft-disputed remark Marie-Antoinette may or may not have once said. What we do know, is that it wasn’t only cake but a world of délicatesses, and Debauve chocolates, that delighted the French court. More than 200 years later, still crafting sweets to a royal standard, Debauve & Gallais—featured in Cabana's brand NEW Paris City Guide—have stood the test of time (and revolution).

BY LUCREZIA LUCAS | ROOMS & GARDENS | 16 JANUARY 2026

Napoleon's chief architects and pioneers of the Empire Style, Percier & Fontaine's original interior for Debauve & Gallais, featuring the hemicycle counter, reminiscent of an apothecary dispensary. © Thomas Tissandier

Their story is said to begin in 1779, with a problem of pure courtly practicality. Marie-Antoinette, troubled by frequent headaches, was displeased by the bitterness of her remedies. Sulpice Debauve, the then pharmacist to Louis XVI (a common career amongst the earliest chocolatiers), answered with French ingenuity. He folded the medicine into cocoa and sugar, softened it with almond milk, and shaped it into elegant medallions which the charmed Queen is said to have named Les Pistoles—a name that stuck.

Despite his royal 'connections', Debauve survived the turmoil of the revolution and in 1800 opened his own maison, soon finding himself supplying the new regime as chocolatier to the ersatz royalty, Napoleon Bonaparte. The maison’s Croquamandes—dried fruits cloaked in chocolate—are said to have sprung from an idea shared by the famed chef, Carême and the Emperor himself. 

If the origin is courtly, the setting is unmistakably Parisian. In 1819, the maison built shop at 30, rue des Saints-Pères, a task for which Debauve commissioned Percier and Fontaine—Napoleon’s favoured architects and pioneers of the Empire style. Their mark shaped the city at large; Louvre, Tuileries, Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. At Debauve & Gallais, distilled into an exquisite space still standing. 

In 1823, Debauve was joined by his nephew, Jean-Baptiste Auguste Gallais—also a pharmacist—who deepened the maison’s guiding principle: utile dulci, the useful with the sweet. Together, they developed “health chocolates,” aromatic and restorative in spirit, each recipe calibrated to a particular affliction. And by 1825, Debauve & Gallais were awarded the title of chocolatier to the Kings of France—for the coronation of Charles X, they created a chocolate in the shape of a fleur-de-lys.

From the Debauve & Gallais archives; an unopened chocolate bar, early 1800s.

At Debauve & Gallais, that grand lineage, and Percier and Fontaine touch, resolves into something intimate yet theatrical: their signature columns and elegant wooden hemicycle counter—an apothecary-style table conceived like a dispensary—still curves through the shop today, a reminder that this is a house born of pharmacy as much as delectable pleasure. The façade, the décor, and that emblematic counter are listed as historic monuments, preserved through daily use.

To this day, the shop stands with the confidence of a long-lived institution: gilded restraint, classical symmetry, the promise of something rich held in careful proportion. Debauve & Gallais perpetuate continuity with new invention—the idea that a chocolate can be both comfort and craft, carrying two centuries of Paris on your palate.

It may be a story of courtly decadence, where rumour and myth blur into fact—but perhaps that is part of the fun and joie gourmande. To treat yourself to Debauve & Gallais is to take a small historical journey and to ask, privately over a bite—did I just share a preference with Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon, Charles X, or any other of the chocolate maison’s fancy clientele? 

The original Debauve & Gallais shop facade on 30 rue de Saint-Pères, designed and completed by Percier and Fontaine in 1819.