Restaurant Christopher Coutanceau

17000 LA ROCHELLE

17/20
Prestige Restaurant

BOOK

6 PHOTOS

Chef Christopher Coutanceau

Cooking Gastronomic | specialty

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

260€ à 310€

Gault&Millau's review

17/20

Prestige Restaurant In 2024, the immense dining room with its 40 m of bay windows, facing the Concurrence beach, celebrates 40 years of Coutanceau. Forty years of exceptional dining that looks the ocean straight in the eye, with sublime sunsets. Forty years of fine deep-sea gastronomy, the legacy of which has been carried on by Christopher since 2007. This fisherman-cook, who grew up here, knows the marine vegetable garden inside out. In an eco-responsible spirit, he studies the seasonality of seafood, shares his discoveries of forgotten fish and brings them up to date. He avoids meat, and works with simple fish, like this mackerel, which he smokes, then magnifies by cooking it one-sided, and accompanying it with a few asparagus spears and a wild herb broth sprayed with garum. Like these live langoustines from La Cotinière, he loves variations, with a fresh tartare spiked with caviar, a jelly of claws with Espelette chili, and the breaded claw with panko and pistachios, dipped in a gourmet sabayon. Open to all possible cooking techniques, he sublimates the pollack by cooking it at 46°C, accompanying it with artichokes in three ways and a beurre blanc made from the pollack's fumet, which he binds to smoked pike roe with just a hint of acidity provided by the blackberry. He also likes to take risks: the beef tartare is a playful trompe-l'oeil in which the cuttlefish has been vacuum-marinated in an extraction of red beet juice. It is finely seasoned with herbs and accompanied by a mesclun marinade and cuttlefish ink soufflé potatoes. Benoît Godillon's iodized desserts ride the same ocean wave, with citrus, sea fennel and gin. The 22,000-bottle, 2,400-strong cellar, home to collectors' wines and vins de terroir, is well equipped to take on the open seas. The alert, young and stylish service in blue suits, supervised by Nicolas Brossard, invites you on a sensory voyage across the Atlantic. And let's not forget the decor by Bertrand Pourrier, who found his inspiration in the sea: sandy leather walls, ocean-blue carpeting, a ceiling carved with waves from which 500 "LED drops" emerge, like stalactites, whose intensity automatically adapts to the natural light. All of which adds to the magic of the place.