L'Assiette Champenoise

51430 TINQUEUX

19/20
Exceptional Restaurant

BOOK

8 PHOTOS

Chef Arnaud Lallement

Cooking French | Gastronomic | specialty

Services Accomodation | For people with disabilities | Pets allowed | Private parking | Valet parking

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

155€ à 385€

Gault&Millau's review

19/20

Exceptional Restaurant At this altitude, the air is pure, and the champions who frequent these peaks are few and far between. Even rarer are the independent chefs, who make their home here and combine the professions of business owner, cook and innkeeper. In the nobility of the genre, there's L'Assiette Champenoise and its chef Arnaud Lallement. When asked about staffing problems the other day, Lallement said he'd been rather spared. "And in your other establishments?" asks his interlocutor. "In the other houses, things are even better, since there aren't any." And here, everyone takes their hats off: for over twenty-five years, Arnaud Lallement has built everything, staked everything (and with what success!) on haute gastronomy and on just one house. And what a house it is! With his wife Magali, his sister Mélanie and his team of firefighters (they all look happy and proud, we wonder why, when everyone says they're hard jobs), he makes your stay unforgettable. Because he has a high idea of prestige à la française, which is not exclusively entrusted to financial directors, he can give the best, and even the exceptional, at every turn, leaving the choice, which has become a rare luxury, by proposing menus and an a la carte where everything is properly sumptuous. Among this year's treasures: crab, in a tartlet of flesh and plankton sauce or in a stunning version of the claw with a curry and spice sauce; osciètre caviar with haddock and a potato mousseline, a classic revisited with such grace; lobster in a new version, with green chili and amaretto (another version offers it as a tribute to its dad with potatoes). France is all about sauces and great sauciers: Arnaud belongs to this school and is one of the all-time greats, along with the likes of Arnaud Donckele, Yannick Alléno, Jean-François Piège, Guy Savoy and Christian Le Squer, as evidenced again by this beurre noisette on a hollandaise base, a marvel of creaminess on brill with caviar, or on 12 kg turbot (not whole, we assure you) with onions. Meats receive the same attention, and desserts are generous, by an equally excellent pastry chef (magic, raspberry and vanilla!). As for the wine list, it's the most dazzling, but above all the most coherent, the most pointed, the most suggestive, especially on champagne and burgundy. And if you're lucky enough to taste all this pleasure in its entirety, you'll find that, whatever the price, in terms of happiness and memories, you'll be amply repaid.