Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse in à L’Hôtel De Paris is a 3 star Michelin restaurant. While the hotel is undergoing renovation the restaurant is in a temporary location, but if you didn’t know that you’d never guess, as the room is decorated in an elegant modern decor. This spot will eventually become a breakfast and lunch restaurant which seems perfect as the doors from it lead onto the lovely terrace and ocean view. One interesting feature, besides the well spaced tables and comfortable leather seating, was the large oval shaped linen napkin. Service is attentive without being intrusive and as chatty as you desire, with most speaking perfect English. At lunch there is an a la carte menu, and of course the ladies menu’s don’t have prices, and a 4 course lunch special with an option of 2 glasses of wine for 30 euros. As there were 2 choices for 3 of the courses we were able to try a number of their dishes at a reasonable price point. As expected with this caliber restaurant your dining experience will also include lots of off-the-menu items.
As we studied our choices they brought out some vegetable and olive crisp breads that were both nice but I particularly liked the vegetable one as the colorful vegetables added an interesting taste to the crisp.
Next were rolled up vegetable snacks with a black olive dipping sauce. All tasted nicely fresh but had mild flavors.
A selection of raw fish under a glass dome was brought out on stones. At the table they added broth to the hot stones below and replaced the cover to gently steam the fish. The selection included skipjack tuna with olive, mackerel with lemon, cuttlefish with tomato, mullet with basil, and local fish which was like a sea bream. All were cooked perfectly and it was a good selection of tastes and textures.
A country bread with light gluten was served with shaved Brittany butter and olive oil. The wonderful crisp crust surrounded a nice doughy interior which a grand receptacle for the tasty butter.
A basket of additional breads is assembled from a cart nearby and offered at the table. I chose bacon bread which was soft and smokey with a lovely ham essence. Nice!
Casareccia pasta, red squash from Piedmont, bitter salad and lemon was cooked like risotto. Included were radicchio and basil for a sweet and tart perfect pasta that was excellent. The round balls of squash absolutely melted in your mouth.
The Cookpot of millet, wood mushrooms and cabbage was very tasty. It had an avocado sauce and went down very easy. It was a nice combination of flavors and textures.
A baguette was served now with a great crispy crust and chewy interior. It was nicely fat, as opposed to being thin, which gave it a better amount of texture.
Seared scallops from Dieppe were served with watercress soup and chestnuts. The scallops were sweet with the watercress providing a nice contrasting sauce. Topping the scallops were crunchy tops of bread and chestnuts. A very fun and tasty dish.
Milk-fed lamb was served alongside red leaves lettuce salad and tiny spelt. The evenly pink lamb was delicate and tender with no dry bits. The spelt was served at the table and was totally tasty. The lettuce was topped with a rich lamb sauce. This dish smoked the scallops – it was a great course and the clearly more flavor intense of the two choices.
A palate cleanser was a granita of green apple and rocket leaves. There was a bit of gel on the bottom full of apple flavor. It was all served in a cold metal bowl that preserved the granita’s texture.
A selection of cheeses included goat cheese and textures of soft and hard cheeses. It was accompanied by a yuzu dressing salad. Afterwards they brought a bowl of rose petal water for the lady and lime water for the man to wash their fingertips.
For dessert we tried the figs with honey and fig ice cream on fig granita. Bits of fig jam helped to intensify the flavor. It was very nice. Pear was with lemon ice cream on a lemon granita.
The pears were exceptionally sweet and the lemon granita was like an outstanding frozen lemonade. Another good one.
The next treats were flavors of lemon, kumquat with ginger, sugar candy, raspberry and citrus powder pepper. They were mostly tart.
A large copper bowl came straight from the kitchen with freshly candied almonds. They were hot, crisp and delicious. A good sweet fix.
Our coffee choices were Blue Mountain from Jamaica and African Saltame. Both very nice.
We finished with an array of chocolate choices and a tour of the kitchen. The kitchen had at least 25 people working with even more in the pastry area. A wonderful end to a fabulous dining experience.
