1ère édition de 1000 exemplaires.
» ‘A Night at Davé’ retrace, en Polaroid, la vie du mythique restaurant parisien de Tai Cheung, dont les habitués n’étaient autres que les plus grandes stars.
De 1982 à 2017, entre la rue Saint-Roch et la rue de Richelieu, un lieu est devenu, comme c’est souvent le cas dans les grandes villes (et la capitale française n’y manque pas), une sorte de refuge pour le Tout-Paris. Un peu caché mais surtout très confidentiel, un panneau Complet constamment affiché sur la porte, le restaurant Chez Davé était un métronome fidèle où convergeaient tous les mondes, l’un des cœurs secrets de la scène parisienne. Tout le monde, mais surtout tous ceux qui le pouvaient, se pressait sous sa lumière rouge, pour venir manger bien sûr, mais aussi s’abandonner à ses très selectes parenthèses nocturnes.
Tout le monde, c’est vraiment tout le monde. Kate Moss, Jean Paul Gaultier, Madonna, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada, Jim Jarmusch, Yoko Ono, Iggy Pop, Rei Kawakubo, Jeanne Moreau, Lou Reed, Loulou de la Falaise, Sarah Moon, Keith Haring, Mick Jagger, Naomi Campbell, Arthur Elgort, Yves Saint Laurent et même Allen Ginsberg, ou Helmut et June Newton… Chacun savait que c’était chez Davé qu’il fallait être. C’est d’ailleurs ce qu’écrit Sofia Coppola, qui a passé la porte rouge enfant avec son père et ensuite seule, dans la préface du livre qui rassemble les images de l’époque, capturées par celui qui se faisait appeler Davé, Tai Cheung. »-Sarah Renard dans Harper Bazaar France
1st edition of 1000.
« This new book of intimate Polaroids shows what it was like to dine and be divine at Davé.
Once upon a time in Paris, on rue de Richelieu, a restaurant called Davé was the center of the universe. Owned by Tai Davé Cheung from 1982 until it closed in 2018, this was where, on any given night, you could witness the most glamorous cohorts noshing on Chinese food and chattering about glamorous things in between puffs of their long cigarettes. You might see Yves Saint Laurent gossiping with his big glasses on, or Madonna with a rose in her mouth, or Naomi Campbell mid-meal with a naughty smirk. In later years, Davé was frequented by the likes of Sofia Coppola and the Olsen twins.
All of this has now been memorialized in a new book published by IDEA and edited by Cheung, Boris Bergmann, and Charles Morin. The tome, titled A Night at Davé, features intimate Polaroids taken by Cheung himself, as well as notes and letters written to him from some of his most beloved patrons. Davé became famous by word of mouth—an impossibly chic chain of events that started with the likes of Grace Coddington and Helmut Newton dining at Cheung’s father’s restaurant, meeting him, and following him to his own restaurant once he opened it on his own. After that, they’d bring their fabulous friends to Davé, and soon more fabulous friends followed, and so on.
Polly Mellon and Arthur Elgort, along with Coddington and Newton, were some of the original crew to dine and be divine at Davé. The restaurant’s legacy isn’t so much about the food or the decor (though the fish tank was something to be remembered) but about the creative forces that gathered around the tables there. It’s rare today for any restaurant to attract that kind of untouchable star power in fashion and cultivate itself as a style mecca. Davé did it all and more.
Below, here’s a look inside A Night at Davé, where the food was good but the glamour was great. » -Brooke Bobb in Harper Bazaar
