Restaurant la Marine

85330 NOIRMOUTIER-EN-L'ÎLE

19/20
Exceptional Restaurant

BOOK

3 PHOTOS

Chef Alexandre Couillon

Cooking French | Gastronomic | Local | Seafood | specialty

Services Children's menu | For people with disabilities

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

210€ à 320€

Gault&Millau's review

19/20

Exceptional Restaurant A simple amuse-bouche. A hot infusion of grey shrimp, powerful and refined at the same time, the scent of iodine wafting from it, and we're immediately plunged into Alexandre Couillon's world, between beach, fire and sea spray. After asking himself a few questions about the future of his house in the midst of a pandemic, our 2017 Chef of the Year is more enthusiastic than ever, planning to open a fishmonger's very soon alongside his restaurants, and actively thinking about completely rethinking the premises, notably by moving the main dining room. In the meantime, the former student of Michel Guérard and Thierry Marx is blossoming a little more each day in the kitchen, looking after a team that wholeheartedly embraces his vision of cuisine (reduced set-up to the bare essentials, minute cooking, fish from responsible, local fisheries, vegetables, herbs and flowers picked each morning from his own kitchen garden...) and insisting on his duty to pass on his knowledge. The fifteen or so lucky diners who sit down for each service in this modest little room have probably never eaten as well at La Marine as they have over the last few months, and will long remember experiencing a real shock with the magnificent Kyra lettuce with fig leaves and onion juice, and remaining speechless in front of the magical sole married to abalone, imperial prawns (caught in autumn in the former salt marshes converted into oyster beds), cockles and a rock fish broth of astounding balance, and to be amazed by each of the dishes: mackerel, lobster with caviar, julienne fillet, turbot or pollack. The iodine and vegetal flavors of the desserts (a magnificent balance of coffee, artichoke, chocolate and pine molasses) make for total happiness, which can also be seen on the faces of the small team led by Céline Couillon, the perfect room manager.