La Petite Plage – Eric Frechon's beach hut on the Old Port

On the Quai Jean-Jaurès, a few steps from the legendary Senequier café, La Petite Plage occupies the site of L'Escale, the port's cult canteen that Groupe Annie Famose reinvented as a beach hut in 2016 and renamed La Petite Plage. Since April 2018 the kitchen has carried the signature of Eric Frechon, the former executive chef of the three-Michelin-starred Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris, who now draws up the restaurant's card for the group. It means Saint-Tropez's old port can claim to be the only village on the coast with two three-starred chefs cooking under its roofs, alongside Arnaud Donckele at La Vague d'Or. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, filed under the guide's own price code for addresses where you spare no expense. Guests eat quite literally with their feet in the sand, facing the boats moored along the quay, in a room that trades the resort's usual gloss for driftwood, wicker and bougainvillea.

01The room and the setting

The decor plays the beach-hut idea straight: natural wood, soft emerald touches and a genuine sand floor beneath the tables, with the glass front pushed open onto the port so the dining room and the quay become one continuous terrace. The tourism board describes an interior planted with bougainvillea, offering a warm, colourful interlude in wood and rattan, a few metres from the water and ten metres from the hulls of the yachts moored opposite.

Inside, the palette runs to beige, pink and orange, the kind of faded holiday colours Saint-Tropez wears in August. By night the room turns from lunch terrace to something livelier: jazz notes drift in as the light fades, and DJs and occasional live singers carry the bar through to the small hours.

02The chef

Eric Frechon earned his Meilleur Ouvrier de France title in 1993 and went on to lead the kitchens of Le Bristol Paris from 1999, where the restaurant was awarded three Michelin stars in 2009. At La Petite Plage he has stepped outside the formality of a Paris palace to write a looser, sunnier card, one meant to be eaten barefoot rather than in a jacket.

Insider tip

Seasonal address, closed for winter as of October 2026, reopening spring 2027; book by phone.

The brief, as the opening press material put it, was cuisine for the season itself: light, elegant, built on fine produce and finished with a touch of originality rather than technique for its own sake. One dish, a rockfish soup he calls 'retour de pêche', was devised specifically for this address, drawing on an old recipe port fishermen once traded among themselves after a night at sea.

03The cooking and what to order

The card leans hard into the Mediterranean: a Tropézienne salad built like a niçoise, a whole steamed artichoke with anchoïade, and small squid sautéed 'la petite plage' style, sharpened with chorizo. Crudo and tartare dominate the raw section — yellowtail carpaccio with violin courgette and mint oil, sea bass tartare with lemon and virgin olive oil, tuna tartare refreshed with mint, smoked yoghurt and pistachio.

From the menu read in October 2026: gilthead sea bream with tomato confit, ginger and basil; a cioppino of monkfish, mussels, squid and fennel; grilled octopus with burnt pepper and feta; roast chicken breast with olives and lemon gnocchi; and, for two, a plancha-grilled Black Angus rib steak with café de Paris butter and thin fries. Those wanting to spend properly can add fifty grams of Baeri Impérial caviar from Sologne, or order linguine dressed with it outright.

Desserts stay close to the coast's own repertoire: a Pavlova of red and black berries, an espresso affogato with caramelised hazelnuts, and the house signature, a Tropezian millefeuille scented with orange blossom.

04Wine and drinks

The list leans unsurprisingly towards Provence rosé — a Domaine Pascati Panthère and a Grande Réserve from Domaine de la Rouillère sit alongside firmer choices such as a Sancerre rouge from Domaine Lucien Crochet, a white Pouilly-Fuissé from Domaine Lassarat, and bottles of Veuve Clicquot's Carte Jaune for the table that wants bubbles with the view. A separate bar card covers cocktails and Champagne by the glass for guests who linger after lunch into the hour when the music turns from jazz to something louder.

05When to go and booking

La Petite Plage runs as a seasonal address: as of October 2026 the restaurant has closed for winter and is due to reopen in spring 2027. Tables for up to twenty can be arranged by telephone for lunch, dinner or full privatisation, and the kitchen keeps both a restaurant card and a bar card running side by side through the service, from the first lunch crowd off the yachts to the DJ sets that carry the port's nightlife into the small hours.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.