Le Georges - Le Grand Monarque

28000 CHARTRES

16.5/20
Remarkable Restaurant

BOOK

11 PHOTOS

Chef Thomas Parnaud

Cooking French | Gastronomic

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

98€ à 155€

Gault&Millau's review

16.5/20

Remarkable Restaurant Is the Grand Monarque new? No, we don't intend to introduce you to this forty-year-old establishment. What is new, however, is the remarkable recent rise of chef Thomas Parnaud to the top ranks. In just seven years, this young chef - he's still only 34 - has found his home and the confidence of owners Bertrand and Nathalie Jallerat. And today, freed from a certain amount of pressure and in control of the entire kitchen, he is proving his worth with incisive, remarkably executed dishes, imbued with respect for both haute cuisine and the 70 or so producers who supply him in the region around Chartres. There are certainly a few influences from the great chefs he admires (Anton, Renaut, Giraud, with whom he worked, and even Gagnaire), but his richly detailed menu is very much his own, and frankly exciting. A remarkable shrimp and parsley appetizer, a little prodigy with catfish ikejimé, lightly smoked ventrèche dos en tartare and caviar de Sologne jus ciboulette pomme de terre, a pike cookie enhanced with tasty "petits Paris" from a local producer, a pike-perch with crispy skin served with a cheerful pôchouse sauce and bourgueil wine, and the great winter pleasure of a pithiviers of mallard, Perche foie gras, frisée and truffle, Apicius sauce with spices from Martinique, an island dear to him and where he once lived. It's easy to see how this sequence approaches the four-toques, right up to the (only) good buckwheat chocolate dessert, aided by fair and committed service, overseen by Christophe Vuillard, always at ease, and a very large cellar, offering verticals of great flacons galore, and providing the classic essentials of fine labels.

Plan