Daniel Boulud, the prolific French chef known for his classic Michelin-starred New York City flagship Daniel and other fine dining destinations, wants to take humble airline food to lofty new heights. Boulud’s Manhattan eatery empire includes Café Boulud, French steakhouse La Tête d’Or, Lyonnaise-style Le Gratin and seafood-centric Le Pavillon, while his now-shuttered db Bistro Moderne helped usher in a luxury burger boom in the 2000s.
But the Lyon-born chef—who also oversees restaurants in Palm Beach, Miami, The Bahamas, Toronto, Montreal, Singapore, Dubai and Riyadh—recently teamed with Air France to upgrade in-flight menus in its first class La Première and Business cabins departing to Paris from 18 U.S. airports.
Before boarding a recent flight from New York to Paris, Boulud explained how his dishes were designed to tantalize taste buds at 35,000 feet. “Often what works very well is braised dishes, and in French cuisine we love to braise,” Boulud told Maxim during a brief chat in the Air France lounge at JFK airport. “I actually wrote a book on braising, called Braise: A Journey Through International Cuisine. A lot of those dishes, like the short ribs or the pork shoulder, do well. Any stew or type of braise reheats very well. So it’s important because the dishes are prepared, chilled, then reheated on the plane. So, no steak frites,” he added with a chuckle.
Boulud’s first Air France entrees include a tasty pork shoulder confit with a rich mustard jus accompanied by potato purée, kale, and roasted apples, along with a Provence-style chicken with potatoes, roasted fennel, and olives. These DB-approved dishes, which are a notable upgrade from typical airline fare, join plates designed by Dominique Crenn, a triple Michelin-starred French chef based in San Francisco, and desserts by pastry chef Laurent Le Daniel.
Boulud also weighed in on New York’s ongoing high-end burger craze, which he is sometimes credited with kickstarting. The DB Burger, launched at db Bistro Moderne in 2001, famously featured a sirloin patty stuffed with foie gras, short rib, and black truffles and sold for a then-exorbitant $35. That extravagant burger paved the way for scores of upmarket NYC patties, including the Black Label Burger at Minetta Tavern, the Double Wagyu Cheeseburger at 4 Charles Prime Rib, and the dry-aged cheeseburger at Red Hook Tavern.
“I definitely started the burger mania,” Boulud declared of his burger’s 2000s-era heyday. “The DB Burger became a monster burger in the media. And then people were trying to imitate, to create a burger to be more expensive than mine, with gold flakes and stuff. The media was just like, ‘Your burger is a joke and the DB is the real thing.’”
True to his competitive nature, Boulud offered up his own dry-aged burger with crispy pork belly, caramelized onions, and melted gruyère served at Le Gratin when asked for a current NYC favorite, but admitted that he also likes the smashburger at Gotham Burger Social Club.
Boulud isn’t the only French culinarian who is celebrating a new Air France partnership. Xavier Thuizat, the award-winning, Burgundy-born head sommelier at the five-star Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, has been tapped to curate wine, champagne, spirits, and French beer offerings in the airline’s travel cabins and Parisian airport lounges. Air France could hardly have collaborated with a more historic luxury partner than the former 18th-century royal palace that employs their new somm. Overlooking the Place de la Concorde, Hôtel de Crillon masterfully blends old-world grandeur with modern elegance, courtesy of a Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Écrin, and a glamorous cocktail emporium, Bar Les Ambassadeurs, where well-heeled guests line up nightly to secure a stool at the bar.
The 124-room landmark with a Neoclassical façade and tree-lined courtyard was originally commissioned by Louis IV in 1758 and served as the Count de Crillon’s family residence until 1909, when it first launched as a hotel. Now part of the luxury-focused Rosewood hotels portfolio, it reopened in its current incarnation in 2017 after a four-year renovation and boasts two lavish suites designed by the late fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld.
During a recent visit to the marble-walled Bar Les Ambassadeurs, which features an Al Fresco-painted ceiling that dangles two chain-draped chandeliers, the gilded lounge’s uniformed bartenders crafted upscale riffs on classic cocktails at the horseshoe-shaped bar. In between sampling flawless martinis, my table feasted on bites from the bar’s limited-time collaboration (through January 15) with Caviar Kaspia, the Parisian institution founded in 1927. Caviar-topped grilled cheese squares, caviar and smoked salmon blinis, and mini black truffle and comte-crowned croques were all quickly dispatched, even after snacking on sweets at the Crillon’s stellar Butterfly pâtisserie.
Later, after making a requisite stop at the hallowed seafood brasserie Le Dôme Café in Montparnasse to devour its Le Marine shellfish tower—a briny fever dream of crevettes, prawns, oysters and crab liver—I checked into Fauchon L’Hôtel Paris, which also has a historic Air France affiliation. The 54-room boutique gem that opened in 2018 is the first hotel launched by Parisian gourmet brand Fauchon, which supplied in-flight teas to Air France beginning in the 1960s and is renowned for its foie gras, chocolates, madeleines, and other treats. While the grand dame Crillon and the gourmand-oriented Fauchon provide entirely different hospitality experiences, they both notably occupy the top two slots of Travel + Leisure’s Readers’ 10 Favorite Hotels In Paris for 2025.
It’s easy to see why people love staying at this stylish hideaway nestled in the 8th arrondissement. The sheer amount of free Fauchon snacks is a welcome surprise after opening a guest room’s pink metal minibar, which is helpfully stocked with complimentary chocolate truffles, caramel squares, fig and almond toasts, foie gras, and a jar of olive tapenade, along with large bottles of still and sparkling water.
That relentless Fauchon branding continues in the hotel’s ground-floor restaurant, The Grand Café Fauchon, which offers multi-course meals paired with their signature teas and serves an array of other Fauchon goodies. You’ll find options to pair a flame-tempered mackerel slathered in a matured soy marinade with a Fauchon Mango, Passion, and Orange-flavored black tea. Or perhaps you’d prefer a filet of Challans duckling served with Fauchon Acacia French Honey, or a lemon cream and vanilla tartlet smeared with Fauchon Bitter Orange Jam? In terms of appealing to the hordes of tourists who are shamelessly eating their way through Paris, it’s an admirably sly way of integrating product placements into virtually every hotel meal.
