Le Louis XV - Alain Ducasse à l'Hôtel de Paris

98000 MONACO

Gault&Millau Academy's member

7 PHOTOS

Chef Alain Ducasse

Cooking French | Gastronomic

Services Disabled access | Private Parking | Valet parking

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

230€ à 420€

Gault&Millau's review

Gault&Millau Academy's member The French grand style, when it's successful, is unequalled. At the table of Louis XV, you may be a commoner, but you can imagine dining at Versailles with Du Barry or at Talleyrand's table in Valençay, with Carême's cuisine. For Californians or Qataris on a stopover in Monaco, the mental effort is a little more uncertain, but everyone agrees and recognizes the work of this remarkable brigade: the work in the kitchen is top-notch, and Emmanuel Pilon, who has been in charge for two years, brings out plates as you'd expect from such a place: extraordinary. The counterpoint between the green oyster and the red swordfish is a wonderful idea, but the red mullet and artichoke that follow as starters are in a different league. The first, with all the red mullet's natural flare, the rocky iodine of the fish, the meaty power of the offal, the hazelnut and black fig (bourjassotte) add an astonishing subtlety. The second, master of the plate, seems to spring as much from the center of the earth as from the ocean, with this sea anemone (or tomato) "sausage", burnt nettle and Kristal caviar. These two very surprising dishes precede a more "Ducassian" bass, a seductive sauce, tomato and sea cucumber, and a beautiful poularde concombre cuisse confite amarante tagète. The calm, organization and mastery that prevail in the kitchen also reign in the dining room, managed with such talent by Claire Sonnet, a radiant director who regulates the choreography with perfect fluidity. The cellar, under the guidance of the excellent Maxime Pastor, evolves from the powerful base of the great labels, with more unexpected and very well found estates, such as Belargus or Clos Cibonne, able to follow the whole menu with a more or less agreed register, but always in the right balance. We conclude with Sandro Micheli, our in-house pastry chef, who is as good as any media champion when it comes to reinventing chocolate, raspberry (in texture, praline of cedar pine nuts, and in a warm stew on fir-tree ice cream) or peach (yellow, warm in a soufflé, white, cold in a granita).