“It has to be wow! It’s France that we’re highlighting,” confides a maître d’hôtel before dinner at Versailles

Everything happens under the gilding of the legendary Hall of Mirrors. A huge table 62 meters long which crosses the gallery; on a gray tablecloth, the Sèvres service of the Élysée, which we call “the bird service”, the silverware engraved RF for French Republic. Then, around, dozens of butlers fine-tune the last details and it’s down to the millimeter. They even have a meter in their hand to measure the distance between the fork, the knife, the plate.

By order of the Élysée, interviewing staff is prohibited, but one of the butlers confides that for him, it is “the dinner of a career (…) It has to be wow! it’s France that we’re highlighting.” Three weeks of preparation for him and his teams, the time to deoxidize the cutlery, to check all the plates closely, one by one, and to transport everything to the Palace of Versailles for the big day.

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Hugh Grant, Charlotte Gainsbourg… prestigious guests

King Charles III will be addressed as “His Majesty the King” or “Your Highness”. He will enter with his wife Queen Camilla on Handel. The 160 guests will already be at the table, most certainly standing to welcome him, whether it is the actor Hugh Grant, the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, the star Mick Jagger, the historian host Stéphane Bern, or even the boss of the giant of luxury LVMH Bernard Arnault. And of course President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte. The royal couple and the presidential couple will be seated side by side with their backs to the mirrors of the gallery, facing the large canal in the garden, but the precise seating plan remains secret for the moment.

A gourmet menu with French chefs

Gastronomic haute couture, with three French chefs among the most Michelin-starred in the world, starting with Anne-Sophie Pic and her lobster starter. She had carte blanche, but she still had to check with Buckingham Palace that the king would like it. The king who is flexitarian will eat meat this evening, since chef Yannick Alléno is concocting Bresse poultry accompanied by a porcini mushroom gratin. Then, the cheese platter and plated dessert, the famous “isfahan” from pastry chef Pierre Hermé with rose and raspberry with touches of lychee. And the motto of all three of them will be truer than ever this evening: “the customer is king”.