Mademoiselle Paris Restaurant and Bakery has been operating quietly inside Peninsula Bed & Cocktails on Beach Boulevard South in Gulfport — a venue-within-venue arrangement run by French husband-and-wife duo Myriam and Jean Dandonneau. The restaurant divides its hours along two distinct formats: mornings run as a traditional French café with fresh-baked croissants and pastries, while evenings shift to a full bistro anchored by steak au poivre, escargots, and Brittany buckwheat crepes made with imported French products. Per the operators' Instagram, Mademoiselle Paris has accumulated more than half a dozen major awards, including what the Dandonneau team describes as Best French Restaurant in Florida.
The choice of location carries its own logic. Gulfport's Beach Boulevard runs at a different register than the concentrated dining corridors of downtown St. Pete or South Tampa — independently operated, modest in scale, and historically resistant to the volume-driven concepts that anchor busier strips. Embedding a classical French restaurant inside a boutique bed-and-breakfast provides a structural advantage: hotel guests and weekend visitors support the café program through morning hours without requiring the operators to sustain a standalone street-level concept through a slow weekday open.
The bistro program carries the more substantive culinary argument. Steak au poivre and escargots are standard French bistro vocabulary, but Brittany buckwheat crepes — galettes de sarrasin — occupy a narrower lane. The galette requires buckwheat flour and a technique distinct from the wheat-flour crêpes more common in American French kitchens. The Dandonneau team's commitment to imported French products across both the pastry and dinner programs signals a regional specificity that suggests the couple brings direct knowledge of Brittany's kitchen traditions rather than a generalized French-restaurant concept.
