Our history
The history of your restaurant, L'Orangerie de Montargis
A gastronomy house rooted in two centuries of hospitality in Montargis.
17th – 18th century
To the origins of the place
Located on the old Royal Route No. 7, which connected Paris with Lyon — today Rue Jean-Jaurès — the district of the faubourg de Lyon became, as early as the 17th century, an unavoidable passage for travelers, merchants, and pilgrims passing through Montargis.
In 1627, the Montargois built a chapel dedicated to Saint Roch, the patron saint against the plague, at the southern entrance of the city — deliberately placed outside the walls to keep the contagion at bay. Around it, an area gradually developed, with shops and houses hosting travelers on the Lyon route.
In 1646, the Ursuline nuns acquired a vast plot of land of more than 3 hectares along the outskirts, between the road and the canal, to build their convent. Their buildings line the street, and their gardens undoubtedly contain an orange grove, as did their Benedictine sisters at the other entrance to the city — whose building now houses the Université du Temps Libre.
This evocation of the old gardens and orange groves gives the name L’Orangerie a particular depth today.
18th – 20th century
Over 200 years of hospitality
As early as the end of the 18th century, a first innkeeper settled in this location: Claude Gaudin, who declared himself an « innkeeper and patache contractor » in a town planning petition of 1780. The patache was the vehicle of the less wealthy people on the Lyon road — its drivers, the patachons, formed a turbulent tribe in this very busy suburb. The phrase «leading a life of a patachon» has outlived them.
The house that now bears the number 57 on Jean-Jaurès Street passed through several hands, without ever losing its vocation as a place of welcome.
A notarial deed from 1874 confirms that it was then known as the « Auberge de Saint-Roch ». The adjacent chapel, converted into a dwelling house, serves as a tollhouse at the southern entrance of the city, where a tax is collected on goods entering Montargis.
Georges Henri Trou, who opened his inn here before 1914, died for France on October 29, 1918 — fifteen days before the armistice — his name is inscribed on the Montargis war memorial. His wife Alice ran the establishment on her own until the end of the war.
Marcel Lemaire, who took over the business in 1920 under the name «Aux Bons Amis», was himself wounded during the war; it was his wife Marie Gaume who ran the café on a daily basis.
At the initiative of his successor Pierre Jeantaud, the establishment adopted the name of «Chez Pierre» in 1958, after eight years of operation under its former name. This name would subsequently endure for 29 years, under four successive operators.
“The vocation of this house has always been the same: to receive and to gather.”
1992 – Today
The birth of L'Orangerie
In 1992, chef Franck Foucard became the owner of the premises and decided to give this house full of history a new lease of life.
Together with his wife Catherine, they created L'Orangerie de Montargis, a restaurant where fine-dining cuisine, a sense of hospitality and conviviality come together. Franck chose this name in the hope of drawing inspiration from the universe of Claude Monet and his Water Lilies — a choice that takes on an unexpected dimension when one considers that the Ursuline sisters certainly cultivated their own orange grove here, in this garden, three centuries earlier.
Even today, the Orangerie perpetuates the historical purpose of this place: welcoming visitors and making every meal a moment of sharing.
Short story
In the 1930s, Maurice Charrier, Catherine’s father, lived in a small room located in the courtyard of the building that now houses L'Orangerie.
Research published in the Bulletin of the Society of Emulation of the Montargis District, No. 199, June 2026.
