A designated historic building, the restaurant on the place de la Madeleine is a brilliant illustration of Art Nouveau. For Alain Senderens, cuisine is also an art, a gourmet adventure which conjures up original alliances: Brittany lobster with white peaches, wild Scottish salmon cooked in clay...  Each dish is accompanied by wine carefully chosen to skilfully bring out and enhance its full, rich flavours.

Alain Senderens was born in 1939 in South Western France. After learning his apprenticeship at the Ambassador Hotel in Lourdes, he moved to Paris at the age of 21. Following positions as commis garde-manger and chef rotisseur at La Tour d'Argent, Alain Senderens moved on to work at Lucas Carton one year later. While working as a saucier, for two years, he studied the techniques of classic cuisine under Soustelle, Lucas Carton's renowned chef.

Alain Senderens then moved on to Berkeley where he was first promoted to chef saucier and then chef poissonnier. Upon the opening of the Hilton Orly, he became the restaurant's sous chef. He then opened his own restaurant, on rue de l'exposition in Paris in 1968. He renamed this restaurant "l'Archestrate" after antiquity's most famous gastronomist. Archestrate, a man who took pleasure in experiencing the best the world had to offer with regard to food and drink, became a role model for Senderens who went on to earn all his stars within the following 10 year period.

In a tiny restaurant, Alain Senderens devoured the literature of the art of gastronomy, looking for, testing and adapting long-forgotten recipies: jambon de mouton, quenelles of hare, and brouet d'anguilles to name but a few.

His innovative capacity for culinary art equaled only his passion for reading about the subject. He was determined that there were thousands of combinasions and mixtures which had never been tried. In 1971, Alain Senderens moved l'Archetrate to 84 rue de Varennes. Then, in 1985, he bought Lucas Carton located on the Place de la Madeleine. Alain Senderens is considered a chef apart by all those who know him. Cuisine is his obvious passion, acquiring an art form by a man who could well have been born an artist or musician.