Paris opens its first-ever naked restaurant

Local residents have welcomed the launch

Sarah Young
Saturday 04 November 2017 10:35 GMT
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A country known for its laissez-faire attitude to nudity, France already boasts stacks of beaches, campsites and pools that can be enjoyed in the nude.

But now, Paris has opened its first-ever naked restaurant where diners can bare all while tucking in to dinner, Le Parisien reports.

Aptly named O’naturel, the restaurant opened to the public on Friday after a successful private dinner reserved exclusively for the Paris Naturist Association on Thursday.

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“Tonight, we only had the members of the Paris Naturist Association,” Managers Mike and Stephane Saada told Le Parisien.

“They’ve supported us from the beginning, and we reserved our first soirée for them.”

The pair added that the members were delighted with the experience and it seems they’re not the only ones.

Intrigued at first, the neighbourhood’s residents seem perfectly at ease with the launch of the restaurant, which can be found on rue de Gravelle in the 12th arrondissement.

“It doesn’t bother me at all, or my neighbours,” a man called Mehdi told the newspaper.

“We don’t see anything from the street. We know what’s happening. It’s not a massage parlour.”

A dinner at the restaurant, which seats 40, offers diners a meal that costs around €30 (£26), after they are asked to leave all their clothes in a wardrobe before entering.

And, while it remains to be seen whether Parisians will warm to the idea of naked dining specifically, with more than 2.6 million people in France making nudism a regular habit, it’s certainly a scene that’s positively booming.

In fact, the city already boasts one public pool where people can swim in the buff up to three times a week, as well as around 460 areas including camping sites and beaches.

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