La Table d'Antonio Salvatore in Monaco – five tables beneath Rampoldi

In the old cigar room below Rampoldi, one of Monte-Carlo's oldest restaurants, Antonio Salvatore cooks contemporary southern Italian food for five tables. It has held a MICHELIN star since 2021.

Rampoldi has stood on Avenue des Spélugues, a few steps from the Casino, since 1946. Upstairs it is a classic Italian brasserie of the old Monte-Carlo kind, with pizza, pasta and a 1.2-kilo Black Angus tomahawk on the menu. Downstairs, in the room that used to be the restaurant's cigar club, its chef Antonio Salvatore runs something far more personal: La Table d'Antonio Salvatore, a gastronomic restaurant with five tables. It received its first MICHELIN star in 2021, and the 2026 guide confirmed it.

Salvatore opened it in the middle of the pandemic. "A very small number of people in the world were brave enough to open a gastronomic restaurant during Covid, and I was one of them," he told Monaco Life.

01The cigar room

The room keeps the wooden chests where club members once stored their cigars and whisky; according to Monaco Life, one of them bears the Grimaldi crest and belongs to Prince Albert II. Each of the five tables is laid with Rampoldi's own tableware. It is a quiet, enclosed space, closer to a private dining room than a restaurant, which suits a long dinner where the chef's cooking is the only event.

02A chef from Basilicata

Antonio Salvatore was born in Basilicata, in the south of Italy, and went to hotel school at 14. His career took him to London, Canada and Spain – where he worked at El Chaflán in Madrid – and to Moscow, where he ran Semifreddo-Mulinazzo for the Sicilian chef Nino Graziano. In Russia he met the new owner of Rampoldi, who brought him to Monaco.

Insider tip

Five tables only – book well ahead; dinner Tuesday to Saturday.

The MICHELIN inspectors describe top-notch contemporary Italian cooking built on first-class sourcing: small producers around Menton and San Remo, and some ingredients brought in from southern Italy. Salvatore has said that tradition is the basis of everything he does, "just with finesse and the finest ingredients".

03What to order

The dishes carry Italian names. Bottoni di vitello tonnato reworks the Piedmontese classic with roasted veal, tuna sauce, smoked peppers and powdered capers. Danza del gambero brings red shrimp together with a tomato and strawberry emulsion, buffalo mozzarella and basil; Carne da amare is a meat tartare with Osciètra caviar, Parmigiano crisps, green apple sorbet and mustard; and Rosso di Sanremo is a soup of San Remo red prawns with fresh tagliolini and Bronte pistachio.

Among the main courses are Cabri dodici ore, suckling lamb cooked slowly at low temperature with pear purée, Jerusalem artichoke, port sauce and potatoes alla scapece; Il volo, pigeon with coffee; octopus alla luciana with Vesuvius tomatoes and Pantelleria capers; and blue lobster from Brittany with grilled tomato sauce and smoked provola foam. Desserts include Tradizione 2.2, a variation on chocolate with saffron cream and Maldon salt, and Ricordo d'infanzia – "childhood memory" – with lemon granita, orange ice cream and Maraschino.

The tasting menu, described as an emotional journey between origins and innovation, brings together several of these dishes. The wine list is strong on Italian sparkling wine – Franciacorta from Ca' del Bosco and Bellavista, Trento DOC from Ferrari – as well as Champagne.

04Upstairs at Rampoldi

Salvatore also runs the kitchen of the brasserie upstairs, which is open for both lunch and dinner and offers a far more relaxed way to taste his cooking. Rampoldi stands in the Carré d'Or, between the Casino gardens and the shopping streets of Monte-Carlo, so La Table is within easy walking distance of the Hôtel de Paris, the Hermitage and the Métropole.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.