With this establishment Salis is remembered as the creator of the modern cabaret: a nightclub where the patrons could sit at tables with alcoholic drinks and enjoy variety acts on a stage, introduced by a master of ceremonies who interacted with the audience.

Rene Gilbert painted heads; Wagner hands; Antonio de La Gandara draperies; Salis, finally, backgrounds and landscapes ..."[3] In order to combine art and alcoholic beverage, Salis had the idea of creating a café in "the purest style of Louis XII ... with a chandelier of wrought iron from the Byzantine period, and where the gentry, the burghers and peasants are now invited to drink absinthe after the usual manner of Victor Hugo and Garibaldi, and hypocras in golden bowls.

"[4] In reality, the first tavern called The Black Cat (Le Chat Noir), opened in November 1881 in a two-room building at 84 Boulevard Rochechouart (a site now commemorated by a plaque), began by serving bad wine and with a rather inferior decor.

But from the first, at the door, guests were greeted by a Swiss guard, splendidly bedecked and covered with gold from head to foot, supposedly responsible for bringing in the painters and poets who arrived, while barring the "infamous priests and the military."

[5] The first site's success was assured with the wholesale arrival of a group of radical young writers and artists called Les Hydropathes (“those who are afraid of water”), led by the journalist Emile Goudeau.

"Male, square-shouldered, red hair dyed vermilion," Salis was described by Laurent Tailhade, "ageless, though stout, his face channelled by many wrinkles, his chest in a romantic doublet whose floral satin contrasted with the sobriety of a dark coat.

Intact, his tawny hair was consistent with his coppery beard and gave him the air of a Flemish trooper ... [He had] a bronze baritone, emphatic, biting and sarcastic, whose thunders cynically put down the Philistines ... [He had] a prodigiously charlatan nature.