At midnight last Friday, the Maison Rouge was nearly full. In one corner of the dim room, perhaps inspired by the Victorian bordello atmosphere, five inebriated individuals drained alarmingly full glasses of wine and conferred in shouts about who among them had participated in a ménage à trois. Nearby, a quieter group politely ignored their louche ways, looking intently at a laptop. One of the fivesome digressed insistently, "You look great in that chair! Isn't this place bizarre?"
Indeed, it is bizarre, for the Maison Rouge—with its elaborate Bordeaux-colored velvet couches, its flickering crystal chandelier and fireplace, its chessboard and candles and dark, glossy, claw-footed coffee tables—does not exist. Its windows have no glass, the fire on the hearth is fake, and its doorway has no door, merely a lip of threshold and a change from faux flagstone (outside its supposed premises) to faux hardwood (inside its cozy, counterfeit confines).
The Maison Rouge is within the brand-new Cafe Metropolitain, which seeks to replicate Paris at night, indoors on a corner of East Olive Way. A fabricated plaza, strung with white lights and rife with little round tables, is replete with artificial trees, scale-model streetlamps, a fountain with lions disgorging water, and a functioning (pseudo) open-air cafe and separate beer garden. On one side are the curtained windows and ivy and awnings of a brasserie and L'Hotel d'Orleans, yet, clearly, just beyond these windows is a wall and Boylston Avenue. In another corner, a wine shop showcases molded plastic grapes and bread and wheels of Brie in its (plastic) picture windows; inside, a lovely freestanding dark wooden bar awaits, and pretty stained-glass panels (real? Who can say?) depict grapevines.
According to Parisian-style street signs, you're in the 6th arrondissement near the door, the 18th near the Maison Rouge, and the 3rd over by the bathrooms. Where you feel like you are, however, may have more to do with your level of intoxication and/or exposure to Paris. (Of the Friday night/Saturday morning fivesome, one sank deeper into a wingback chair, proclaiming, "I want to live here in fake France forever.") Disneyland's New Orleans Square may be closer to the mark; Cafe Metropolitain is the pet project of a former animator (rumored to have worked on the cartoon Family Guy). Where you are, ultimately, is in his surreal, incomprehensible simulacrum of the City of Lights. Wi-Fi! Electronic music! Why not?
The entirely friendly staff, given to obscenely generous pours of decent wines, will also serve you a watery American beer or a Trappist ale. But be warned: The food here would make a Parisian weep—dining-hall-quality spaghetti, uniformly chilled airline-style sandwiches (some costing, preposterously, $8.95). But you're not here for the food—you're here to be in the weirdest place in the city, if not on earth.
Cafe Metropolitain, 1701 E Olive Way, 324-0771.
