After a restaurant in Brooklyn and a first hotel in Saint-Ouen, it is in Lyon that the Mob inaugurated its third establishment three years ago. Located in the Confluence district, which has been undergoing rapid development over the past ten years, this hotel-restaurant offers an original setting that is as pleasant for a rooftop drink as it is for a meal based on local products or a peaceful night in the heart of the city.
Located at the tip of the peninsula where the Rhône and Saône rivers meet, this area is constantly welcoming new spaces that bring with them their share of exciting projects. After its shopping center, its Confluences museum and the now famous Le Sucre club, it is a hotel that since 2017 has contributed to a new dynamic in this rapidly changing district: the Mob. If this name may sound familiar, it’s because this is not the first time the establishment has opened. Following the opening of its first vegan restaurant in Brooklyn – a neighborhood that inspired its acronym MOB, for “Maimonides of Brooklyn” – it was in the city of Saint Ouen, a few steps from its famous flea market, that its first hotel was created before the one in Lyon opened a few months later. Building on its success, the group plans to open new branches in Bordeaux, Washington, Los Angeles and also in Paris, this time not far from the Gare de l’Est.
As in its Parisian address, the Mob Hotel Lyon Confluence has the same original and efficient components: a pop-up shop entrusted to designers – here from the Rhône-Alpes region – for a few weeks, where clothes, tableware and paintings can be sold, seminar rooms that can be adapted to the various needs of the tenants, convivial common areas with games and other entertainment, concerts and DJ sets regularly organized indoors or outdoors, but also yoga or Pilates classes in which both the curious and the initiated can participate. In the rooms, modernity is also the order of the day. The design duo of Valérie Garcia and Kristian Gavoille, Philippe Starck’s collaborators for more than a decade, have imagined bright rooms with a central bed, which the partition separates from an open bathroom for a free and airy circulation. Each room has a small balcony that also allows guests to enjoy the view in peace.
Normally, the hotel’s restaurant concentrates the essence of the Mob’s project. In this vast, particularly bright room on the first floor, we discover a veritable visual melting pot that translates the group’s openness to the six continents: the sculpture of an elk faces a portrait of Frida Kahlo, itself hanging on the wall between two pairs of paddles, while the open kitchen is decorated with feathers and tropical green plants. At the back of the room, a fireplace, a large bookcase and several blue-gray sofas create a definitely cosy setting, ideal for a convivial meal or a moment of relaxation.
An address to remember as well for a trip along the Saône as for a stay in Lyon, here to be appreciated in its best light.
