Mirazur

Mirazur Review at-a-glance

Awards: Three Michelin stars, #1 Worlds 50 Best Restaurant (2019)

+Wonderful setting perched over the water on the French Riviera. On a sunny day, it does not get any better than this.

+Chef Maru Colagreco has an original viewpoint for his food that reflects his passion for his surroundings, his heritage, and his training in many of the great French kitchens.

Review Rating: 95.5

Verdict: Sometimes it seems like chefs serve a tasting menu because they are supposed to. They tick the boxes for each of the courses but there is no real reason for them to be in a tasting format vs a la care. Chef Maru Colagreco’s food at Mirazur is the opposite of this. His tasting menu follows a very logical progression, designed to take you through a trip of his personal garden and surrounding terrior. This is a meal that is an experience. The setting is stunning and the food is clever and original while also reflecting ideas from the many storied kitchens Colagreco trained in. Rarely have I had a meal where the vision is so coherent between the setting, the food, and even a post-meal visit to the restaurant’s garden. This was not the best-tasting food of the year (it was very good but I still tend to favor more classic food) but it was one of the best meals.

Price I Paid: €250 for the tasting menu

Value: 16/20 although it has since become considerably more expensive

Mirazur and Chef Mauro Colagreco Background

Mirazur’s garden

Mirazur is a restaurant located in Menton, France that is known for numerous high rankings in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list including achieving the ultimate #1 spot in 2019. Regardless of what you think of this list and whether this really makes it the ‘best restaurant’ in the world or is more reflective of the PR machine behind the restaurant, reaching the top of the list is a real accomplishment and makes Mirazur one of the most sought after tables in the world.

Mirazur was opened by Chef Mauro Colagreco in 2006 at the tender age of 29. Prior to opening Mirazur, Chef Colagreco trained under Bernard Loiseau, Alain Passard, Alain Ducasse and Guy Martin - this background is very evident in his cooking style which focuses on lighter dishes that highlight his terrior. I have not had the pleasure of sitting at Passard’s table in Paris but I have to imagine Mirazur is like a French Riviera version of L’Aperage with more modernity and refinement in place of Passard’s spontaneity.

The setting of Mirazur is stunning, set overlooking the sea at the end of a winding coastal road along the Cote D’Azur on the border of France and Italy. Chef Mauro Calagreco’s home and the vegetable garden that provides much of the restaurant’s products are just across the street. Sun shines through the windows of the restaurant which has sweeping views of the water from almost every table. I could not think of a better venue to house Chef Colagreco’s style of cooking. I have been to many restaurants that focus on the local ingredients and have always found the more far-flung restaurants, outside the confines of a city, execute this style of cooking most effectively. Mirazur is one of those such restaurants.

This is not an easy table to book with reservations filling up many months ahead. That said, there is no needless waking up at odd hours waiting for reservations to be released or endless calling to reception - if you are willing to book in advance and wait then you can usually book a table. I made my reservation for Mar20 in Nov19. After five long months of waiting, I was able to visit just before the restaurant shut down due to the first wave of Corona.

As is common with this style of restaurant, it was a tasting menu-only affair. When I visited, the tasting cost €240, a relative bargain given its standing in the culinary community and the fact that every table for lunch and dinner was sold out. Since then the chef has redone the experience and the tasting menu now rings in at a chunkier €320.

This may have changed with the new experience which I believe involves canapes in the garden but when I visited you could request a tour of the restaurant’s garden at no extra charge. I highly recommend taking advantage of this offer - the head gardener will take you through the grounds, explain some of Colagreco’s philosophy and even let you try a few vegetables fresh off the vine which will taste better than any vegetable you have ever had before. You also may even have a chance to throw some bread crumbs to the restaurant’s chickens - if you do look out for the fluffy one, he needs some extra attention or the other chickens will steal is food.

Review of what we ate at Mirazur

The welcoming snacks were a real treat and far beyond your typical amuse bouche and included (from left to right) black truffle and comte grilled cheese, cauliflower tart with roe, pumpkin seed tarts, root vegetable “grissini” with ham, as well as several others I missed in my notes. The overall effect of these bites was sublime. So often the welcoming snacks are boring - I think almost every three star restaurant in Germany has salmon in its opening nibbles. That was not the case for Mirazur. These were original, beautifully presented, and thought-provoking. My favorite was the black truffle grilled cheese because well…it was black truffle grilled cheese and even featured my favorite cheese, comte. I could eat an entire meal of these.

Sometimes I skip over the bread in my reviews but not at Mirazur where they replaced the bread cart with a perfect loaf of pain du partage, a petal-shaped bread “meant to share” as its various petals pull apart into roll-shaped bites. Besides being practical this was a wonderful bread that was served nice and warm with excellent crust and soft pillowy insides. Equally good was the quality olive oil it was served with. An addicting combination that may be perfect to share but was also good enough that my wife and I also each ate at least a loaf each.

The first proper course was a dish that has been on and off the Mirazur menu for quite some time (dating back to ~2103), Gillardeau oyster with shallot cream and declination of William’s pear. This was a smart pair, the nice meaty and briny Gillardeau going well with the sweet pear and the creamy sharpness of the shallot cream. Living in Boston for four years I still prefer my US east coast oysters to their European cousins but Gillardeau oysters are the best Europe has to offer (and priced as such if you ever try to pick them up in the grocery store).

Next up was a small dish of crumbled crab with oxalys which had a really stunning presentation, the oxalys (aka wood sorrel) suspended in a gelatin substance over some fresh picked crab meat. The revelation of this dish was the oxalys as they brought an intense, almost grassy flavor to the sweet crab. The mystery of how the chef coaxed so much flavor from a humble herb was answered during the post-lunch garden tour - it was grown in the chef’s garden a few minutes from the restaurant and picked fresh a short time before being put on the plate.

After the seafood dishes, the meal switched to a focus on vegetables with a dish of asparagus with yoghurt and honey. Like the Gillardeau oyster dish, this was another course that has been around some time - according to our waiter first appearing within a year of Mirazur opening. We visited in March so we were quite surprised to see asparagus on the menu but were pleasantly surprised that it was fantastic quality - perhaps a perk of being grown in the chef’s own garden and picked fresh that morning. I can only imagine how good this dish would have been if the asparagus were in peak season. Outside of the quality of the asparagus, the yogurt and honey combination was relatively straightforward but pleasing nonetheless.

Next up was one of the favorites of the meal. While the dish looked deceptively simple it packed in the flavor - Ragout of fava beans with green peas, “mangetout”, onions consomee. It is not often I love a dish due to the quality of the vegetables but this dish did the trick - the peas and fava beans just burst with flavor. Much like with the asparagus dish, I found myself wondering what this dish would taste like had we come a little later in March when spring would have been in full swing. Either way I could drink the accompanying consomee any time of the year.

Cevennes onions filled with taleggio and a black truffle coulis was a clever dish but a bit of a miss for me. The idea behind it came from stuffed shells with the pasta shells replaced by the cevennes onion which was stuffed with taleggio cheese and served with a black truffle sauce instead of the usual marinara. While the combination worked in theory I found the onion retained a little too much of its sharpness to be enjoyable.

After the vegetables the main seafood dish was a nice piece of Grouper served with black garlic, roasted leek, licorice hollandaise. This was a more straightforward dish than the past few courses as it more or less boiled down to fish plus rich sauce. I did appreciate that the kitchen chose to use Grouper rather than a more common luxury fish like turbot as it made for a more interesting and fresh plate.

The main meat course was duck from challans with carrot and hibiscus sauce. While the breast was on the plate, the kitchen utilized the leg in the form of a duck confit sandwich served on the side. Duck from challans might be a standard fine dining meat course but Chef Colagreco put his own spin on it by using hibiscus in the sauce which gave it a nice floral note. The duck itself was cooked flawlessly and had superb flavor as duck from challans typically does but was not remarkable. The confit sandwich on the side was fun but nothing exceptional. Overall this was a good dish but a step behind my favorite duck courses.

At this point, I had one of the signature dishes of the chef, beetroot, caviar and buttermilk. The dish was not even supposed to be on the menu when I visited. It was hard to tell since there was no menu for the meal, but as we were getting to the meat course I started to worry the dish that put Mirazur on the map wasn't on the menu that day. Upon asking, the server confirmed my fear - there was not enough beetroot so they did not include it on the day’s spontaneous tasting menu. So how did I end up eating it? The server must have seen the disappointment on my face as, without us asking (or adding a surcharge to the bill), they brought out the famed beetroot as an extra course for us to share. I remember this dish as much for the taste (which was fantastic) as I do for this generous showing of hospitality - a server and chef making sure the customer goes home happy.

Pre-dessert was perfect for the area which is known for its lemons, showcasing them in the form of a lemon tart. I love citrus desserts and the chef successfully balanced the acidity of the lemon with enough sweetness so it is not too overpowering.

Given how long I waited for this reservation I, of course, added on the cheese board which was in excellent condition but fairly standard - I was hoping for something more like Schloss Schauenstein where they had many condiments and crackers to go with the cheese selection.

Main dessert was another Mirazur signature dish and consisted of Grand cru of Peru Chuncho “Maison Duplanteur” with burnt rosemary ice cream and sospel olive oil. A brilliant dish, the bitter chocolate was the perfect pair for the creamy ice cream. Rosemary in dessert is tricky so pairing it with olive oil, another typically savory ingredient, is even trickier. Somehow it all worked. As a rule I hate chocolate desserts but this really worked for me as chocolate was one of the many featured flavors in the dessert rather than the only flavor.

Petit fours were in a very “Mirazur” like-fasion and not like what you would typically find in a French restaurant - black sesame cookies, edible peanuts and leaves, and an apple jelly that was smartly presented on a stick.