La Tour d'Argent

[2] The Quai de la Tournelle, where the restaurant stands, was not paved until 1650, before which it was "a slope, often flooded and almost always made inaccessible by mud".

[3] The restaurant today is at the corner of the Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine [fr], which did not exist until the end of the eighteenth century.

[5] Baedeker's 1860 guide to Paris describes the establishment's current location as "out of the way", while mentioning a restaurant associated with a low-cost "Hotel of the Tour d'Argent": "Between Notre Dame and the jardin des Plantes, on the Quai de la Tournelle, facing the bridge of this name, there is a little hotel and the restaurant Lecoq; Hôtel de la Tour d'argent, a bit out of the way, it is true, but well kept and cheap (room, 2 francs, beefsteak, 1 franc).

In Accidental Agent, A thrilling account of underground warfare in France, John Goldsmith, agent of the British Special Operations Executive, tells how after escaping his German SS captors at Hotel Continentale in the Rue de Rivoli, he was hidden in an upper-floor flat in the Tour d'Argent building that was occupied by Rumanian actress Madame Tantzy.

[17] In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway says that the Tour d'Argent rented some rooms and gave its lodgers discounts on the meals; also that a valet there used to sell English books left by the tenants.

[19] In a scene in the 1960 novel The Centurions where French prisoners of war are discussing the kinds of meals and cars they plan to buy with their backpay, an officer named Captain Verdier mentions that Lapérouse has been surpassed by Tour d'Argent in quality, a fact that he finds "most annoying".

From the Paris branch, Bernard Leprince faced Iron Chef Japanese Komei Nakamura twice, with either chef winning once (Leprince won the initial meeting on the French Special at Chateau de Brissac with salmon as the theme, while Nakamura won the rematch in Tokyo with duck as the theme).

One episode of Root into Europe (British comedy starring George Cole) was filmed in the hotel, and the duck being pressed is shown and served to the actors.