Lameloise

Lameloise Review at-a-glance

Awards: Three Michelin Stars

+The lunch menu provides for a tremendous value - you won’t find luxury ingredients but a lot of effort and skill goes into the dishes nonetheless.

-This was very solid cooking but did not elicit the same joy I got from other classic French tasting menus like Waldhotel Sonnora, The Ritz, or Cheval Blanc.

-The sparsely populated dining room did not add to the ambiance and made for a slightly awkward dining experience.

Score: 89.5/100

Verdict: Nothing at Lameloise took my breath away. Then again when you are only spending €85 for 3-courses and quite a few excellent amuse bouches taking your breath away might be too high of an ask. What the lunch did deliver was refined, high-level French cooking. This was the kind of cooking and price point I’d be happy to come back to if I was the area again. Lameloise is not exactly in a metropolis but if you are doing a wine trip to Beaune to try some of Burgandy’s finest, it is a worthy stop on your itinerary even if it may not be the most special meal you’ve ever had.

Price I paid: €85 for the 3-course lunch menu

Value: 17/20

Lameloise and Eric Pras Background

Lameloise is a three Michelin star restaurant in Chagny, a small commune in the Burgundy region of France, roughly 10 miles away from Beaune which is home to many of the great wine cellars of the region. Despite having three stars and a long history, Lameloise has a relatively limited international profile and only came onto my radar because of a glowing 20/20 review from Andy Hayler, a food critic whose opinion I trust.

The restaurant has a rather interesting history, being run by the Lameloise family for over 7 decades beginning in the 1930s and continuing on into the 2000s with several generations of Lemeloise’s heading up the kitchen. The majority of the restaurant’s success came under Jacques Lameloise who took over the kitchen in 1971 and quickly earned the restaurant a second star in 1974 and then the ultimate third star in 1979. Jacques retired in 2009 and the kitchen finally went outside the Lameloise family as it was transitioned to Chef Eric Pras. Chef Pras may not be part of the Lameloise family but he has maintained the restaurant’s three stars all the same. As you’d expect from a chef who so quickly achieved three stars, Pras worked in many of the great kitchens of France including Pierre Garganie before he moved to Paris, Troisgros, and Bernard Loiseau. His cooking style reflects his culinary upbringing in France, featuring refined French technique without being staid or dated.

A meal at Lameloise is a relative bargain, especially if you go for lunch when three courses costs you a mere €85. If you want to go for dinner and enjoy a more lengthy meal the tasting menu runs from €180-€245 depending on how many courses you want. The restaurant’s dining room is spread out amongst several smaller rooms in the hotel but rather run of the mill as far as a three-star restaurant goes. We went for a weekday lunch and the restaurant was rather dead, featuring only one other table which they oddly sat us directly next to which did not exactly create a luxurious ambiance.

What we ate at Lameloise

The meal started with a number of excellent amuses, particularly good being a bit of foie gras enrobed in white chocolate. These were some real classy bites both in execution and quantity, especially given the low price point of the lunch menu.

Lunch also included an impressive bread basket, all of which were excellent with the real highlight being a brioche. I happily polished off three rolls of the brioche and would have done more had the portions of the dishes not been so substantial. 

The first proper course of the meal was a very intricate dish of white and green asparagus with shellfish marinated in beetroot and flavors of cardamom and orange. If nothing else this was a beautifully presented plate with many variations of marinated seafood arranged around some thinly cut asparagus. Interspersed between the asparagus and seafood were small spheres filled with a cardamon flavored milk as well as bits of an orange sauce. In addition to the pretty presentation, the dish brought good flavors although it could have used a bit of warmth.

This light starter was followed up by a well-executed dish that did not dazzle consisting of guinea fowl with polenta, foie gras, and jus and served with a side of fowl leg sausage, morels, and cabbage broth. The fowl breast was moist with crispy skin, an impressive achievement given the thickness of the breast and the relative lack of fat in the meat. Given fowl does not have a strong inherent flavor the success of the course would be driven by the jus and which was capably prepared but did not have the memorable depth of flavor the best sauces do. The polenta was...polenta and not any better or worse than what I would make at home. The lack of incorporating additional elements/techniques to elevate the polenta was disappointing for a three-star restaurant. Separately they served the leg meat minced and then made into a sausage which was placed in a cabbage broth with some diced morels. While the sausage was nice enough and had great texture, the real star of this side was the combination of the morels and intensely flavored cabbage broth. 

A well-stocked cheese cart was in the dining room but was not offered as a supplement and we preceded directly to dessert which turned out to be the best part of the lunch, consisting of grapefruit sorbet, grapefruit segments, hazelnut snow, and anise tuile. The natural tartness of the grapefruit was expertly balanced out by the sweetness of the other components without being cloying. Even more impressive was the sugar tuile on top which had a deep caramelized flavor and paired perfectly with the grapefruit to mimic the flavor of a bruleed grapefruit. This was nearly as good as the grapefruit dessert at Le Cinq and I mean that as a very high compliment. The meal ended with a few more sweet treats including a truly outstanding passionfruit and kumquat combination.

Stray Thoughts

• Service was proficient but the ambiance of the restaurant was seriously lacking. While the dining room was appointed nicely enough there was only one other couple and for some reason, they placed our table directly next to theirs. Given the lack of guests, the noise levels were extremely low which did not help when the table next to us repeatedly blew their noses - not exactly the most appetizing of sounds.

• Be careful what you place into Google maps. We typed in La Meloise and it took us to a country road some 45 mins away from the restaurant. Luckily we were able to make it to the restaurant just in time to get our lunch orders in.