Louis XV
Louis XV review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin stars
+Plush luxury dining room with tall ceilings, grand chandeliers, and paintings abound.
-The simple, ingredient-focused food is what the kitchen is going for but it failed to really excite me.
-Outside of the lunch menu this is priced at the very top of restaurants in the world and it’s hard to say the food matched this high pricing.
Review Rating: 88/100
Verdict: It is hard to find much fault in anything that was on the plate at Louis XV. Cooking was precise and the ingredients used were top-notch. Portions were appropriately sized for a shorter meal, a shockingly rare occurrence for shorter Michelin menus. The dining room was amongst the grandest I have been in and the service was attentive throughout. All of that said, the experience did not resonate with me. Perhaps it was the format - I went for the “cheap” lunch menu so it is unfair to compare it to the best tasting menus I have had. Still, that cheap lunch menu rang in at 180 euros so expectations can’t be discounted too heavily. The food was simple, not due to lack of ambition from the chef but as a stylistic choice to let the natural flavors of the French riviera speak for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that but I prefer the food at this price point to be a little more exciting.
Price I Paid: €180
Value: 10/20
Louis XV and Alain Ducasse background
Alain Ducasse is arguably the most decorated chef in the world with three 3 star restaurants (Paris, Monte Carlo, London) and countless other starred establishments. Before becoming one of the world’s prominent fine dining restauranters, Ducasse made his name by opening Louis XV in 1987 and earning three stars just 2.5 years later in 1989. Despite Ducasse's empire spanning the globe, his three star restaurants all have similar cuisine with each head chef putting their own spin on his contemporary Provencal cuisine.
The kitchen at Louis XV is currently headed up by Dominique Lory who has been part of the Ducasse hospitality family since 2002, working at many Ducasse’s restaurants before working up the ranks at Louis XV and being named head chef in 2013. While by no means modern, Louis XV has one of the grandest dining rooms around. If classic luxury is your thing this is the place to get your fix. The ceilings are high and covered in murals. Ornate gold abounds everywhere.
Matching its location in a five-star hotel in Monte-carlo, Louis XV is pricey. 4 courses, cheese and dessert will run you €380 and a la carte is hardly cheaper with starters costing €85-€170 (for a signature camberino and caviar dish), fish & meat courses costing €120-€150 and dessert €40. Mercifully they do have a much cheaper lunch option which is what I went with - €180 for 2 courses, cheese, and dessert (or €220 with 2 glasses of wine, water, and coffee). It is hard to tell if going with a more expensive option would have changed my view of the meal - the 2 cooked courses did not exactly feature premium ingredients but seemed representative enough of the cuisine at Louis XV.
Review of what I ate at Louis XV
The meal started off with some visually striking thin crisps, with an assortment of what must be the world's most impossibly thinly sliced vegetables baked right into the crisp. Unfortunately, these looked much better than they tasted, the actual crisps being merely average and mostly went uneaten. The crisps were followed by some vegetable spring rolls which showed off some local vegetables. Both of these bites certainly primed you for a meal focused on the first class vegetables the riviera has to offer but did not do much in the way of exciting the taste buds.
The disappointing nibbles were followed up by a much more impressive amuse of local seafood. A variety of fish were presented raw on a bed of rocks and then steamed tableside by pouring liquid nitrogen over the rocks and trapping the subsequent steam under a lid. Besides creating some tableside theatrics this method of cooking also produced some damn good steamed fish with all of the seafood top quality and accentuated with matching garnishes. Prior to diving into the first course, the servers brought by a gorgeous bread basket, all of which were excellent with both versions of focaccia (bacon and black olive) being real standouts.
There was a choice of 2 starters and I went with the ravioli with wood mushrooms, cabbage, and kale. The morels were of excellent quality and the ravioli well made but not the most remarkable start to the meal. Pleasantly the portion of the dish was actually scaled up for the shorter three-course meal.
Milk-fed lamb with a red leaf salad and tiny spelt featured some flawlessly roasted lamb, carved tableside with such a big portion they offered seconds. The meat was moist and had a glorious trifecta of salt, fat, and crusty, seared exterior. The accompanying spelt had a nice toothsome chew and the salad provided a nice respite from the fatty meat but neither were anything to write home about.
As expected the cheese cart was a true pleasure with a large array of cheeses all in perfect condition. As a hard cheese lover, I was happy to see a good number of hard cheese including a real stunner of a 60-month aged Comte. To complement the pristine cheese, they offered a selection of bread and an excellent cherry jam which went particularly good with a funky Roquefort. It is hard to give too much credit for a cheese cart where there isn’t much preparation beyond storing it properly but this was a joy.
Dessert was your choice from the full a la carte selections which featured many of Ducasse classics such as rum baba and grapefruit souffle. After seeing some pretty positive (but dated) reviews in the blogosphere of the restaurant's use of local berries in its desserts, I ignored the classics and went with raspberries from our region with lavender sorbet and tangy marmalade. The success of berry desserts usually comes down to the quality of the berries and these were first class and treated perfectly by the kitchen, the intense natural flavor of the fresh raspberries coaxed out with a nice acidic marmalade. These were some of the best raspberries I have had, on par with peak summer Scandinavian berries, had at Frantzen last August. A dish that displayed the very best of what is possible when carefully sourcing prime, local ingredients.