Extract from Paris for Pleasure-seekers.

There are two entrances to this restaurant that sits above the platforms of Gare de Lyon, neither of which will prepare the first-time visitor for what awaits them. LE Train Bleu is immense, an extraordinary example of la Belle Époque in all of its wild, dizzying pomp. It occupies a sequence of rooms, their walls and ceilings decorated with paintings depicting destinations that trains departing from this station would visit, studded with sculptures, florid light fittings, leather-covered bench seating and hat racks that take their cue from those found in 19th-century first-class railway carriages. The menu is as rich as the setting – heavy French cooking of a kind that requires a long train journey to sleep off its effects. It is far from cheap, but for sheer spectacle this is hard to beat.