Reviewed: Restaurant Lalique au Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey

To helm the kitchen, Denz brought in young chef Jérôme Schilling, who had most recently cooked with Jean-Georges Klein, the head chef of the Villa Lalique in Wingen-sur-Moder. Schilling has impressive credentials, too, since he’s also worked with Joël Robuchon, Roger Vergé, Thierry Marx and Jean-Luc Rocha, among others. Aside from creating an elegant, contemporary Bordelais cuisine of his own, Schilling’s brief also included inventing dishes that flatter or feature the estate’s wines.

The opening of this new project has created quite a flutter in the Bordelais, so it was with great curiosity that I joined three friends for dinner at the new restaurant recently. Arriving, it was apparent that the service is still settling in since, the elegance of the décor notwithstanding, a warmer hospitality style might be better suited to wine country. I expect this will evolve, however, and in any event the three starters we tried were exquisite. A charming three-part riff on the Marmande tomato grown in the southwest included a tomato tortellini filled with burrata, a tomato feuilleté with mozzarella, and a tomato bouillon, while tartare of Bazas beef, also from the southwest and some of the best beef in France, was brilliantly garnished with dashi bouillon, Ossau-Iraty cheese and summer truffle. Foie gras marinated for twelve hours in Sauternes and then sautéed was earthy, edgy and elegant in its simplicity, and main courses were similarly incisive in their creativity, and impeccably prepared, including braised duck breast with a cake of semolina and peaches and a jus flavoured with verveine and sea bream cooked in olive oil and served with Provençal vegetables, anchovies from Collioure and a velouté of bell peppers seasoned with elderflower.

Langoustine presented at Restaurant Lalique. Photo: Emmanuelle Thion