A curated selection of my visits to Michelin Guide restaurants including one and two star dining and noteworthy selections. These impressions highlight precision craftsmanship hospitality and the many expressions of fine dining beyond the three star level.
17 articles
Eight three-star kitchens sit between Menton and Les Baux, the densest concentration in France after Paris. I have eaten in seven. The best food is in Saint-Tropez, the best single dish in Cassis, the best room in Monaco. Here is what each house is like and which one is worth your trip.
Fabien Ferré took three Michelin stars in a single stroke, and I gave him four courses to prove it: a driving day, the last meal of a family week in Provence, a plane to catch. Technique came through at full strength. Ambition stayed behind the longer menus.
Three stars on a terrace above the sea at Cassis, where Dimitri Droisneau cooks straight out of the water below. Book lunch in summer and you get the full experience; a winter evening gives you far less for the same price.
Twelve years after our first family visit, the three-Michelin-starred L’Oustau de Baumanière feels both renewed and recognisable: contemporary in form, classical at heart, and deeply shaped by its setting beneath Les Baux-de-Provence.
Casa Marcial sits alone on an Asturian hillside near Arriondas, far from any fine-dining circuit. You do not pass it; you set out for it. The Manzanos' Nordeste menu turns place, weather and memory into ingredients, in one of the finest three-star dinners I have eaten anywhere.
Aponiente’s 2026 season brings Ángel León’s marine cuisine closer to its source. Part of the meal now unfolds in the marshes, where water, light, fish, and landscape become inseparable from one of the world’s most distinctive fine dining experiences.
At twenty years, Mirazur is not looking back. A collaborative menu by Mauro Colagreco and Ferran Adrià unfolds as a thoughtful sequence of ideas, where cuisine, service, and setting merge into a precise and evolving experience above the Mediterranean.
At Le Louis XV in Monaco, Alain Ducasse’s classical Mediterranean luxury feels composed and precise. A grand old-school restaurant, with exceptional John Dory, remarkable lamb, and service of rare confidence.
At La Chèvre d’Or in Èze, Tom Meyer gives the legendary two-Michelin-star Riviera restaurant a clearer, lighter voice through Mediterranean cooking, Chardonnay, and one of France’s great dining-room views.
Kei Kobayashi’s 3 Michelin star tasting menu delivers French haute cuisine with Japanese precision, from the signature “vegetable garden” to perfect blue lobster and Gunma wagyu, in a discreet dining room with calm, professional service.
Paris has one of the highest concentrations of Michelin three-star restaurants in the world. With my recent visit to Kei, I have now dined at eight of the ten in the city. This comparison draws on more than fifty three-star restaurants I have visited worldwide, with Kei as the latest addition.
At Vienna’s most difficult reservation, the two-star Mraz & Sohn pairs a €188,88 tasting menu with a come-as-you-are mood. A trolley of ingredients and “Wiener Schnitzel immer aus” set the tone: very good, witty cooking, looser plating, and hospitality that favors fun over reverence.
