René MEILLEUR

Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

Be satisfied with excellence, ask for the Best! Haven't we made jokesand puns with his surname? Perhaps it's also a sign of recognition, because throughout Savoie, the Meilleur family's Bouitteis a shining star that's the talk of the region's top restaurants. Welcome to a Meilleur world .

It would be inaccurate, and in part unfair, to reduce René Meilleur's career to the rise of a self-taught man.It's almost anepinalimage, a side-step in a bio to make a mark. But this is what René always wanted. "When I was 14, I started out as a diver. I did a few seasons here and there, notably in Morocco. But it was cooking that attracted me. It's the school of rigor, and it was exactly what I needed .

In 1976, René was 25 years old. Skiing was beginning to develop, but there were as yet no ski lifts in Saint-Marcel.Skiers from Les Menuires or Val-Thorenswent off-piste, and by the time they got to the bottom, theywere hungry. René, who knows his region so well, sees this as an opportunity .

"I traded a property for a potato field. And there I built a chalet. It's already La Bouitte, and René was right, almost 50 years ago. "Right from the start, it worked well, we were doing country dishes, and pretty soon we expanded the menu to give us more choice. We even did frogs!" .

René is a hard worker with the right vision. For a quarter of a century, La Bouitte prospered and grew. " It was a great time. We became very well known very quickly. At lunchtime, we had all the skiers coming down the slopes to the inn, and in the evening, it was the people from the valley who took over and came to party with us". Celebrities passed by and recommended the address ("I remember we often had Stéphane Collaro and his buddies, who put on a great show"). But René also wants his house to continue climbing the gastronomic ladder. " In the 80s, we went to Paul Bocuse's with my wife, Marie-Louise. I was very impressed, by the house, by the talent, by the level. I didn't even dare say I was a chef. Probably because I wasn't. "

The turning point came in 2000. "It was Gault&Millau who really helped us then, when the president at the time, Philippe Faure, came to present me with the Clé d'Or with Marc Veyrat. That's when we decided we really had to go for it. Up until then, we'd limited ourselves to using local produce. Little by little, we moved upmarket. And then Maxime, my son, joined me, and the grades just kept going up". And so did the awards, from all the guides and observers .

Today, this Gault&Millau d'Or marks a new evolution at La Bouitte, also a sign of an era in transformation. "I think we need to get back to simplicity, with less fuss around the plate. And the new generation of Meilleur's, who are arriving very quickly, Oscar, already with us, and Calixte, his brother, are getting ready to continue to make this house shine