Nightclub · Champs-Élysées · 8e arrondissement

Le Bœuf sur le Toit

The buildingStill standing

Getting inIn, as a customer

What's there nowLe Bœuf sur le Toit, here since 1941

The brasserie trades at 34 rue du Colisée, its home since 1941 — the pin marks the room you can visit. The original 1922 bar at 28 rue Boissy-d'Anglas is gone.

The bar-cabaret Louis Moysès opened in 1922, named for the Cocteau–Milhaud ballet — headquarters of the postwar avant-garde around Jean Cocteau, and one of Blaise Cendrars's regular Paris stops.

Address: 34 Rue du Colisée, 75008 Paris
Years: 1922–1928

Illustration The rue du Colisée dining room of Le Bœuf sur le Toit today, starburst chandeliers and a bull's head over patterned banquettes

The same room today, chandeliers lit — the bull still presiding.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

Louis Moysès opened Le Bœuf sur le Toit in January 1922 at 28 rue Boissy-d'Anglas, taking the name from the 1920 stage spectacle by Jean Cocteau and the composer Darius Milhaud. The borrowed title worked as a manifesto: this was to be the room where the postwar avant-garde drank. Cocteau and his circle — the composers of Les Six, the young writers around him, the painters — made it their headquarters, and Francis Picabia's canvas L'Œil cacodylate, signed by dozens of the era's names, hung on the wall.

Blaise Cendrars belonged to that crowd. A historical account of the era describes the young novelist Raymond Radiguet standing at the bar with Cendrars, and a study devoted to Cendrars's Paris counts the Bœuf among his regular stops. The bar is the Right Bank complement to his Montparnasse tables: the same avant-garde, in evening clothes.

The Bœuf is also where French musicians' slang is said to have picked up faire un bœuf — to jam — from the improvised sessions of its nights. The room moved several times as its fashion outgrew each address, and since 1941 a successor brasserie has traded under the name at 34 rue du Colisée, Art Deco interior intact. The 1922 room on the rue Boissy-d'Anglas exists only in the memoirs, which are numerous.

Key facts

Opened: January 1922, by Louis Moysès at 28 rue Boissy-d'Anglas
Named after: Le Bœuf sur le Toit (1920), the stage spectacle by Jean Cocteau and Darius Milhaud
What it was: Bar-cabaret — headquarters of the Cocteau circle and the postwar avant-garde
Today: Open at 34 rue du Colisée — the Art Deco room the house has kept since 1941

In images

Pen-and-ink illustration of Le Bœuf sur le Toit's dining room at 34 rue du Colisée, mirrored walls, starburst chandeliers and the mounted bull's head — The room at 34 rue du Colisée — the name's Art Deco home since 1941, open for dinner.Editorial illustration

The rue du Colisée dining room of Le Bœuf sur le Toit today, starburst chandeliers and a bull's head over patterned banquettes — The same room today, chandeliers lit — the bull still presiding.Editorial illustration

Pen-and-ink reconstruction of Le Bœuf sur le Toit's 1922 facade at 28 rue Boissy-d'Anglas, marble front, curtained windows and passers-by in twenties dress — Reconstruction of the 1922 facade at 28 rue Boissy-d'Anglas — the bar as the Cocteau circle knew it, not a surviving view.Artistic reconstruction

Color reconstruction of the 1922 Le Bœuf sur le Toit facade on the rue Boissy-d'Anglas, marble panels and gilt lettering — The same reconstruction in color — marble, gilt lettering, and the Madeleine quarter beyond.Artistic reconstruction

Timeline

1922
Louis Moysès opens the bar in January at 28 rue Boissy-d'Anglas, named for the Cocteau–Milhaud spectacle of 1920.
1920s
The Cocteau circle makes the Bœuf its headquarters; accounts place Raymond Radiguet at the bar with Blaise Cendrars.
1941
After several moves, the name settles at 34 rue du Colisée, where the successor brasserie still trades.

On the map

Writers who knew this place

Blaise Cendrars

Swiss-born; naturalized French in 1916 · The one-armed adventurer-poet of the Paris avant-garde — La Prose du Transsibérien, Moravagine, the memoir tetralogy — and the living writer Henry Miller ranked above all others.

Frequented by · 1922

Olivier Renault's Le Paris de Cendrars counts the Bœuf among his stops — the Right Bank bar of the Cocteau–Milhaud crowd he moved in after the war.

— Olivier Renault, Le Paris de Cendrars

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