Just steps from Union Square in the basement of a hotel is a portal to medieval France. Enter the Cornell Hotel de France on Bush Street, snake down a narrow corridor and follow the red carpeted steps downstairs. There, you’ll find the heavy wood door of Restaurant Jeanne d’Arc, behind which a life-size statue of the patron saint of France will greet you. 

After 48 years of serving classic French bistro fare in a cave-like space brimming with swords and helmets, Jeanne d’Arc’s owners retired and closed the restaurant in 2020. In December, though, the hotel basement stirred to life once again: Jeanne d’Arc quietly reopened, faux stone archways and all. 

Manoj Chawla of Southern California’s Oceanic Enterprises is the Cornell Hotel’s new owner, and therefore Jeanne d’Arc’s new owner. When he took over for longtime owners Claude and Micheline Lambert, he said he wanted to preserve as much of the original look and feel of the restaurant as possible. And he succeeded. Inside, you half expect a jousting tournament to break out between the white tablecloths. 

“I would be foolish to change what he had created,” Chawla said of Claude Lambert. “I don’t think this creation can be replicated.”

Lambert began managing what was then a grimy residence hotel on Bush Street in 1966. He and his wife and young daughter had recently moved to San Francisco from Orléans, France, and were living in a bedroom in the hotel. 

“Everything was black,” Lambert told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018 (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). “There were mice, rats. When my wife was going into the kitchen, all the roaches were flying everywhere.”

After years of restoring the hotel and cooking for the residents, whose meals and rent were subsidized by the city, the couple eventually had it cleaned up enough to open a restaurant, according to the Chronicle. In 1972, Jeanne d’Arc was born. The Lamberts filled its dining room with stunning stained glass windows and statues and paintings depicting Joan of Arc, all collected on trips home to ​​Orléans. In the late 1970s, they bought the building.

“We’re just an unpretentious country style French restaurant,” Lambert told the San Francisco Examiner in 1979. The Examiner called this assessment “modest,” raving over its cozy vibe and delicious entrees.

In more recent years, Jeanne d’Arc earned high ratings on Tripadvisor, making it a favorite among tourists. But it remained a hidden gem for decades — the Chronicle never even reviewed it until 2019. Then-food critic Soleil Ho wasn’t too impressed with the food, but did give the restaurant points for its “authentic weirdness.”

With the reopening, only a few small details of the restaurant’s distinctive medieval look have changed: a repainted ceiling, reupholstered chairs and new chandeliers.

Chawla also brought back some of the restaurant’s old staff, namely, chef Bernard Moutal, who ran the kitchen from 2000 to 2012. Chawla convinced the 78-year-old chef to leave his position at private San Francisco women’s club the Metropolitan Club and return to his old workplace after meeting with him a few times. 

“I came back because, you know, I got the feeling for that place,” Moutal said. 

Moutal has brought back many of the restaurant’s beloved dishes, including rabbit with mushrooms and red wine shallot sauce, escargots cooked with garlic, butter and parsley, and the Grand Marnier soufflé (available only by request at least a day in advance for now, as it requires special preparation).

Diners have been going wild for the soufflés in particular — when we spoke, Moutal said he’d made 18 souffles the night before. His personal record, though, is much higher: He once made 80 soufflés in one night at the Metropolitan Club. Humbly, he claimed their popularity is a mystery to him. 

“They love the soufflé,” Moutal said. “I don’t know why. You know, for me, it’s really air.”

One major change to the menu is that Jeanne d’Arc was previously known for its affordable prix fixe menu (in January 2020, a four-course dinner was just $58), and right now the menu is a la carte. Chawla, however, is contemplating introducing a five-course prix fixe for about $80. 

Jeanne d’Arc has been in its soft opening phase since December, but is set to officially debut with a grand opening event on Jan. 31. Already, many old customers have returned, overjoyed to see their favorite San Francisco restaurant rise from the dead. 

“When a person who’s been visiting this place for the last 20 years walks in, he’s going to see the same faces, the same decor,” Chawla said. “It is going to feel like nothing has changed, even though it has changed.”

On a late December visit to Jeanne d’Arc after ice skating at Union Square, my partner and I walked into a dining room dimly lit by chandeliers. The yellow walls were decorated with paintings of medieval beasts and knights, accented by dramatic red curtains. We feasted on garlicky escargots, salad with butter lettuce and Roquefort cheese, tender halibut, filet mignon and Key lime cheesecake for dessert. 

The food was good, but even better was the ambience — it felt somewhere between a Loire Valley wine cellar and a Disneyland ride, with an instrumental version of “La Vie en Rose” playing in the background. I sipped my wine and grinned, delighted by the over-the-topness of it all. 

It was new to me, but for longtime patrons of Jeanne d’Arc, I can imagine it feels like coming home. 

Restaurant Jeanne d’Arc is located inside the Cornell Hotel de France at 715 Bush St., San Francisco. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.