How the Boulevardier Rooted an American Bartender in Paris

I landed at Harry’s Bar the way many stories in Paris begin: while chasing someone I loved. I didn’t speak French and had no real plan, but I’d seen a post that Harry’s was hiring. It was a long shot worth taking. I walked in and met Franz-Arthur MacElhone, the fifth-generation owner. I offered to do a one-week stage, and that turned into three years I never saw coming.

Harry’s is one of the few bars in the world where time seems to hold still. Alongside the American Bar at the Savoy in London or La Floridita in Havana, it’s a legend in cocktail-bar history that remains largely unchanged, still serving hot dogs, classic cocktails, and stories from a mahogany bar shipped from Manhattan in 1911. Drinks like the Sidecar, Blue Lagoon, White Lady, and of course, the Boulevardier, have all been served across its storied bar.

The Boulevardier is a close cousin of the Negroni, made with bourbon instead of gin. Strong, sweet, and bitter, it first appeared in Barflies and Cocktails, a 1927 book by Harry’s then-owner, Harry MacElhone. The drink was credited to Erskine Gwynne, an American writer and socialite who edited a Parisian magazine also called The Boulevardier.

That name stuck with me. One day in the cellar, I came across an illustration referencing the magazine. I brought it up constantly—at work, with friends, with guests. Then, while chatting with my landlord, an editor at the Financial Times, she said, “They’re probably archived at the BnF.” Game on.

At the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, I found them. Gorgeous covers. Long-forgotten essays. Even a lost Hemingway piece. It was my Indiana Jones moment. It belonged in a museum—and back out in the world.

The magazine had been short-lived but ambitious. It ran from 1927 to 1932 and featured sharp essays, cultural commentary, and stories from American expatriates navigating Paris. Its tone was clever, unpretentious, and full of charm. Contributors included writers like Ernest Hemingway, Louis Bromfield, and editor Arthur Moss, who once described the persona of a boulevardier as “a permanent fun seeker” whose“ life is a perpetual holiday. All they demand of society is wine and a song.”

That spirit felt timeless, and suddenly, I wasn’t just researching a cocktail or a magazine. I was reviving a worldview.

At first, I imagined turning my ideas for some sort of Boulevardier reboot into a coffee table book. But publishers were elusive. One ghosted me, one fizzled out, and one laughed me out of a bookshop. In hindsight, I’m glad. It forced me to rethink the project—and rethink Paris.

The Boulevardier project became something to hold onto through the quiet, in-between moments of bartending life. Harry’s is the kind of place where you can bring anyone and meet everyone. Just when I thought it was done, someone would walk in and connect the next dot: a friend of Hemingway’s great-grandson, or people like contemporary drink writers Aaron Goldfarb and David Wondrich. Each encounter made the project feel more real.

I started out wanting to celebrate a cocktail Harry made for the editor of a long-forgotten magazine, and ended up thinking more about that boulevardier worldview. My head was stuck in the past. Not in the “I’m-opening-a-speakeasy, waxed-mustache, arm-garter” kind of way, but in the way so many people have when they come to Paris— quietly searching for something unchanged, unadulterated, authentic.

That sense is like the quality of hospitality itself. You can’t name it, but you can feel it. It’s when the music is just right, and the temperature and lights are perfectly tuned. Or in this case, it’s the feeling of something that drifts along the boulevards, unwinding like smooth ribbons of silk, up to the highest points of Buttes-Chaumont, where the city exhales around you.

The Boulevardier started as a magazine inspired by a lifestyle, and detoured into a cocktail that was forgotten for decades before finding new life in the 21st century. And finally, this fall, it’s coming full circle, with The Boulevardier Anniversary Edition available to read online. I hope you enjoy following the story as much as I did chasing it down.

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