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Not owning your own Formula One racing team doesn’t make you a social pariah in Monaco. But you do need to know your Pommery from your Dom Pérignon and be able to tell a grilled John Dory from a singed dorado. In Monaco and its town of Monte Carlo, people judge you by your palate. Lacking one is more of a faux pas than not having a helipad on your super-yacht.
Monte Carlo has always been home to the haute monde. Now it’s the home of haute cuisine. The famous tax haven on the Côte d’Azur is also a haven for some of Europe’s most acclaimed chefs. Monaco boasts 130 restaurants in 0.75 square miles. Imagine nine Michelin stars within an area little more than half the size of Central Park. That’s the principality. It’s one big temple to good taste. But you need a tie to get in.
Not all local restaurants cater to the jet set. Good lower-ladder Monégasque cuisine is a fusion of traditional Provençal and orthodox niçoise. Perhaps the best and most atmospheric place to taste good-quality local fare is Castelroc, near Prince’s Place in the Old Town (Place du Palais; Tel: 377-93-30-36-68). It offers stocafi (dried cod in tomatoes with black olives), le cundyuns (anchovy salad), and the sweet bread fougasse. The terrace has the Riviera feel without any self-conscious, look-at-me glam. Menu items are €20 to €40, which won’t bring on major tax-bracket envy.
But Monte Carlo is known more for its upscale eateries, such as the one-star La Coupole (1 Avenue Princesse Grace; Tel: 377-98-06-98-98), run by chef Yannick Franquès. Connected to the Hotel Mirabeau by a glass tunnel, the restaurant is the comfortable and unpretentious side of grand. Franquès’ specialities include creative, regional cuisine such as smoked salmon with limes, sautéed sea bass, and pigeon bressan roasted with black olives.
If you’re ready to scale such heights of haute cuisine, following are four of the best places to (Michelin) star-gaze in Monte Carlo.
Le Vistamar / The conspicuous consumption for which Monaco is feted is perhaps best appreciated at the Hotel Hermitage’s Le Vistamar restaurant overlooking the yacht-jammed Port d’Hercule harbor. But for executive chef Joël Garault, who describes his menu as “a hymn to the sea,” the most important boat in Monte Carlo is Les Cinq Frères, owned by the Rinaldi brothers, who bring him his fish every day. They are Monaco’s only pro fishermen, and the business is in its fifth generation. They provide the affable Monsieur Garault with rockfish for his saffron bouillabaisse and local whitefish, which makes him kiss his fingers and want to cook in capsicums and sea salt and serve the succulent results on smoked glass. “The fishermen give me my ideas. For inspiration, I sometimes walk around our Oceanographic Museum!” he says.
The chef recommends shrimp cannelloni and red mullet. Le Vistamar offers a seasonal black truffle menu at €88. The atmosphere is nautical; the only background music is popping champagne corks. Traditional amuse bouches (“tidbits” to philistines) come in the form of local barbagiuans—bijou pastry parcels filled with spinach, cheese, leeks, and garlic.
“My cooking is about old-fashioned aromas and authentic tastes. Why make things complicated?” Garault says. The naturally, rather than professionally, charming Garault doesn’t hold it against you if you are not a well-known face. His heroes are all fish.
Hotel Hermitage, Square Beaumarchais; Tel: 377-92-16-4000 or montecarloresort.com
Restaurant Joël Robuchon Monte-Carlo / The same template of sophistication without strain is to be savored and respected at Restaurant Joël Robuchon at the Hotel Metropole Monte-Carlo. You don’t feel like you can catch the waiter’s eye only by giving the impression you can personally meet the world’s crude oil demands. But the place is special. Every mouthful feels like your anniversary. Executive chef Christophe Cussac deservedly has just been awarded two stars for menus that include gelée of caviar with cauliflower froth, quail, and sublime chestnut soup with a slab of foie gras. The ingredients are treated just like the diners, with the utmost respect.
The designer of the dining room, Jacques Garcia, worked for the sultan of Brunei. The opulence is clear, but it’s not ostentatious. You hardly notice the chandeliers. But as a general rule, when you are eating in Monte Carlo, you know you are somewhere.
The Metropole’s teppanyaki open kitchen creates an “alliance of simplicity and refinement,” which means that there is a sense of history but without kitsch. It feels like a tea room. And the aperitif is a given. You must start with une flute. A Russian grand duke once smashed 60 magnums of champagne against a marble pillar at a Monte Carlo hotel just for a toast. In a place where bubbly flows so freely, you deserve at least a little.
Hotel Metropole, 4 Avenue de la Madone; Tel: 377-93-15-15-15 or metropole.com
Le Louis XV / Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in La Place du Casino is the only Michelin three-star restaurant in town. It is a humbling experience to eat there.
Haughty courtesans shoot sneers of withering contempt from the fin-de-siècle portrait frames, suspecting that the Vaucluse asparagus is wasted on you and that the turbot with caramelized endives will go over your head. The Félix Hippolite Lucas ceiling fresco and quasi-Versailles tapestried walls bear down on you as you study Franck Cerutti’s fabled menu and bow to the sommelier’s knowledge. Savoir-faire (and common sense) demands following his instruction. “Je propose une flute de Billecart Salmon champagne rosé,” followed by “un Clos Saint-Joseph avec votre coquillages et peut-être un Château de Beaucastel Vieille Vigne Châteauneuf-du-Pape.” Just say yes. The restaurant’s wine cellar stretches for a mile and contains 600,000 bottles of the world’s best grapes.
As for the food, you can’t go wrong. In 1998, Ducasse became the first chef to be awarded six Michelin stars. His empire spreads daily. His restaurant here has a choice of 16 mineral waters, 11 coffees, 13 teas, and 15 types of cigars. Should you choose to visit The Grill, on the top floor, chef Sylvain Etievant delivers meat carved at the table and a soufflé that has attained celebrity status.
Hôtel de Paris, Place du Casino; Tel: 377-98-06-88-64 or montecarloresort.com
Le Blue Bay / The main culinary influences in Monaco are naturally French and Italian. But the principality’s latest culinary celebrity, Marcel Ravin, has brought Caribbean/colonial spices to Le Blue Bay at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort. From Martnique via Brussels, Ravin offers “Les formulas déjeuner” at €40. His high-ceilinged, L-shaped restaurant in the 11-floor hotel on the Larvotto peninsula is resolutely trendy. Perhaps a little Vegas. It is Monaco gone modern and international. The setting provides the nostalgia. Decorated in pale green and powder blue by Pierre Yves Rochon, the restaurant bills itself as “a theatre of intermixed cuisine” and extends an “invitation to a sensorial expedition” with four seasonal dinner menus.
Saveurs d’île aux épices is goose foie gras with mango jelly, vanilla, and cardamom. Brill and vetiver comes with gourds and Swedish turnips, spaghetti, and prawns. Tuna Rossini is topped with duck foie gras and served with truffles and tofu. Line-caught monkfish in a clay and cocoa coating comes with green mango tabouleh and kumquat. Ice creams compound the tropical assault. Directeur des Restaurants Frederic Nardello and Sicilian waiter Angelo Truisi look after everyone with charm and courtesy. One day, Truisi wants to open his own restaurant with his father. In Monaco, of course. Why go anywhere else?
So keep out of the racing cars and the casino. Living it up in Monaco is best done at a restaurant rather than a roulette table. No restaurant here is a gamble.
Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort, 40 Avenue Princess Grace; Tel: 377-98-06-03-60
Kevin Pilley, a frequent Monaco visitor, is a former chief editor of Punch magazine. His work has appeared in more than 400 titles worldwide.
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