Raoul’s

Raoul’s is a French bistro at 180 Prince Street in SoHo, Manhattan, and one of the neighbourhood’s longest-surviving restaurants. Brothers Serge and Guy Raoul, originally from Alsace in France, opened the restaurant on 8 December 1975. Despite the prominent “Restaurant Français” sign above the entrance – which has occasionally led film-location sources to identify the establishment by that name – the restaurant itself has been known as Raoul’s since it opened. The premises had already housed restaurants before the brothers arrived, most recently the Italian restaurant Luizzi’s. The brothers had little money to remodel, so they kept much of what was already there, including the booths, chairs and other furnishings, while Mr. Luizzi initially stayed on to help in the kitchen. As the remaining Italian ingredients were used up, the menu gradually became French. Even Delmas Howe’s self-portrait, which had hung in Luizzi’s, remained on the wall and is still part of the restaurant’s extensive art collection. Over the following decades Raoul’s became closely associated with SoHo’s artist and film communities while retaining much of its old interior, including the pressed-tin ceiling, long wooden bar, striped booths, spiral staircase, fish tank and walls crowded with paintings and photographs. The restaurant remains in the Raoul family, with Serge’s son Karim Raoul continuing the business established by his father and uncle.

Raoul’s has appeared in Addicted to Love (1997), A Perfect Murder (1998), The Departed (2006), The Nanny Diaries (2007), Sex and the City (2008), Devoured (2012) and Homeland (2011–2020). Its dark, slightly worn-in dining room has proved remarkably adaptable on screen. It has served as the restaurant of a French chef, a meeting place for Gwyneth Paltrow’s troubled wife, the Manhattan interior of a Boston mob hangout and the almost entire setting of a horror film. In several cases very little needed to be changed, while Sex and the City (2008) covered the familiar room in Valentine’s Day decorations for one of the film’s most uncomfortable conversations.

In Addicted to Love (1997), Raoul’s becomes the restaurant owned by French chef Anton Depeaux. Sam has followed his former girlfriend Linda to New York after she leaves him for Anton, while Anton’s former fiancée Maggie has arrived with her own plans for revenge. Sam eventually gets a job washing dishes at Anton’s restaurant, allowing him to stay close to the man he regards as his rival while Anton remains unaware of who he really is. The restaurant later becomes the target of one of Sam and Maggie’s nastiest attempts to destroy Anton’s new life. On the evening an important food critic arrives for dinner, they release cockroaches into the restaurant. The insects begin appearing around the dining room and on the critic’s table, with Anton desperately trying to contain the disaster as one even ends up in the critic’s food. The stunt helps wreck the restaurant and Anton’s livelihood, making Raoul’s considerably more important to the film than a simple background location.

In A Perfect Murder (1998), Raoul’s is where Emily Taylor meets her close friend Raquel Martinez for a drink and discusses the affair she has been having with artist David Shaw. Emily is married to wealthy financier Steven Taylor but has become increasingly unhappy in the marriage, and Raquel presses her about David and whether he knows about her family and money. Emily insists that David is interested only in his painting and in her, before suddenly realising that she has accidentally left her wedding ring at David’s apartment. When she returns home, she tells Steven that she has been having a drink with Raquel, unaware that Steven already knows about the affair and has begun setting in motion a plan to have her murdered. The restaurant can be identified not only by its distinctive interior but also by the Prince Street surroundings visible outside; the neighbouring Hans Koch shop, then located at 174 Prince Street, can be seen in the background. Some film-location sources identify Raoul’s as “Restaurant Français”, taking the wording from the large sign above its entrance, but this was signage describing the French restaurant rather than a separate name used by the business.

In The Departed (2006), Raoul’s provides the interior of the fictional Charles Street Brasserie, the Boston restaurant and bar used as a headquarters by Irish mob boss Frank Costello. The location is actually assembled from two cities: the exterior was filmed at Charles Street Cleaners at 17 Charles Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill, while the bar and dining-room interiors were filmed inside Raoul’s in Manhattan. The restaurant appears during several scenes involving Costello and his organisation, including the tense after-hours meeting in which Costello speaks privately with Billy Costigan. Billy has infiltrated Costello’s crew as an undercover Massachusetts State Police officer, while Costello has become aware that there is an informer somewhere inside his organisation. As Costello discusses the problem and studies Billy’s reactions, the conversation carries an obvious second meaning for the audience, since Billy is precisely the man he is trying to uncover. Raoul’s cramped, dark interior gives the Charles Street Brasserie the feeling of a place Costello has occupied for years, even though stepping through its fictional front door would in reality take you from Boston to SoHo.

In The Nanny Diaries (2007), Raoul’s is used for a restaurant scene involving Annie Braddock and Hayden, the neighbour she initially refers to only as the “Harvard Hottie”. Annie has taken a job looking after Grayer, the neglected son of the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. X, and has been warned that her employers do not approve of their nanny having a romantic life of her own. Her growing relationship with Hayden therefore becomes something she has to keep separate from her work. Their time together at the restaurant comes as Hayden increasingly sees how badly the job is affecting Annie and becomes one of the few people encouraging her to think about what she actually wants from her own life. Raoul’s provides a noticeably warmer and more intimate setting than the formal Upper East Side world in which Annie spends most of her working day.

In Sex and the City (2008), Raoul’s is transformed into a heavily decorated Valentine’s Day restaurant for a dinner between Carrie Bradshaw and Miranda Hobbes. Months have passed since Big abandoned Carrie at their wedding, and Miranda has been carrying a secret from the disastrous days immediately before the ceremony. During dinner she finally admits that, while furious with Steve at the rehearsal dinner, she encountered Big and told him that he and Carrie were crazy to get married. Carrie is horrified that Miranda has kept this from her and believes the remark may have contributed to Big panicking and walking away from the wedding. What begins as a Valentine’s Day meal between two single friends turns into a bitter argument, and Carrie leaves the restaurant angry and hurt. The cheerful red decorations filling Raoul’s make an effective contrast to one of the most uncomfortable scenes between Carrie and Miranda in the film.

In Devoured (2012), Raoul’s is not just a brief location but the principal setting of the film. Lourdes, played by Marta Milans, is an immigrant working nights cleaning a New York restaurant while sending the money she earns to help her seriously ill son, who remains in her hometown with his grandmother. Much of the story takes place after the customers and staff have gone home, leaving Lourdes alone inside the restaurant as increasingly disturbing incidents begin to occur around her. She sees apparitions, hears unexplained sounds and becomes unsure of what is real as the pressures in her life and the strange events inside the building begin to close in on her. Director Greg Olliver specifically wanted the restaurant itself to feel like another character in the film and chose Raoul’s because of how dramatically its atmosphere changes after closing time. The paintings, narrow passages, old furnishings and dim spaces that make the room romantic during dinner service become unsettling when Lourdes is left there alone in the middle of the night.

In Homeland (2011–2020), Raoul’s appears in the season-six episode “The Covenant” (2017) as the location of a secret meeting between Carrie Mathison and President-elect Elizabeth Keane. Carrie enters through the restaurant kitchen and is checked by security before being taken into a private back room to meet Keane. The incoming president has been told by Dar Adal that Saul Berenson considers evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear programme “conclusive”, but Carrie immediately doubts that Saul would describe intelligence in such absolute terms. She advises Keane to read Saul’s actual report rather than relying on Dar’s interpretation and to raise her concerns with the sitting president before acting. Neither woman realises that Dar is listening to their supposedly private conversation from outside. Raoul’s is therefore used not as a recognisable public restaurant but as a deliberately discreet meeting place, with its kitchen and back rooms becoming part of Homeland’s world of surveillance and political manoeuvring.

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