If you’re planning a trip to France this year, we have a few restaurant suggestions that will transform your typical dining experience “into exceptional and memorable gastronomy,” to quote Michelin.
The company just unveiled its 2020 Guide for France and there are three new eateries that were awarded the coveted three stars.
Chef Kei Kobayashi’s Paris restaurant, Kei, enters the exclusive three-star club of haute cuisine thanks to “his creative brilliance associated with the solidity of his technique.” Kobayashi, who learned all about haute cuisine from two of France’s most famous chefs (Gilles Goujon and Alain Ducasse), opened his own restaurant in Paris’s first arrondissement in 2011. Inspired by his native Japan and his French gastronomic background, Kobayashi, who is also the first Japanese chef to receive three stars in France, serves up dishes with unexpected flavors in an elegant dining room that features contemporary touches.
L’Oustau de Baumanière, located in the ancient village of Les Baux-de-Provence in the South of France, and led by chef Glenn Viel, also added one more star to its Michelin rating. The legendary restaurant, which opened its doors in 1945, offers its patrons traditional dishes with a modern twist prepared with fresh, local ingredients.
About the restaurant, a press release from Michelin stated: “The chef's genius is expressed in the ease with which he transforms the superb products he works with to the rank of exceptional dishes....each ingredient of the rich local produce finds its meaning and its true flavors in the hands of the chef.”
And finally, in the coastal city of La Rochelle, chef (and fisherman) Christopher Coutanceau impressed the famously secretive Michelin judges with his incredible seafood.
“The harmony between the chef's delicious creations and the depth of the aromas in the wines that accompany them is evident. [It is] a gastronomic getaway where land and sea are not simply in harmony, but in perfect symbiosis, and where the dishes celebrate the power and the fragility of the ocean,” stated Michelin.
There are 628 eateries featured in this year’s guide, and 63 of them are new. For the first time ever, Michelin also unveiled a new green pictogram that will be awarded to chefs committed to preserving the environment.
