Le Carré d'Ange – Provençal gastronomy under the cicadas' song

Below the tiered silhouette of Montauroux, in the Var's Pays de Fayence, Le Carré d'Ange occupies a restored Provençal house that chef David Carré has run since 1 March 2015, when he took over the address from the starred chef Eric Maio's L'Auberge and finally cooked under his own name. It is one of the addresses Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, and Gault&Millau places it at 13/20 as a Chef's Restaurant. Carré built his craft in some of France's grandest kitchens before settling here, and that pedigree shows in food that is precise rather than showy: seasonal Var produce, a shaded terrace loud with cicadas, and a dining room that has quietly become one of the best-known tables on this edge of the Var, close to the Alpes-Maritimes border.

01The room and the setting

The restaurant sits in a freestanding house below the village, reached by the RD37 through the Narbonne quarter. Inside, four small rooms in ochre and beige tones unfold around two fireplaces and a bar lounge, laid with white tablecloths and seating up to forty guests. A spacious room in ochre and beige tones, tables dressed in white, two fireplaces and a bar lounge, with a pleasant shaded terrace for warm days; forty guests can be served indoors and forty more on the terrace.

Outside, the terrace is the real draw in summer. The house's garden setting, screened from the road, gives the meal its own soundtrack: rustling leaves, cicadas, and the shifting light through the foliage that the restaurant itself describes as part of the experience. It is a setting built for lingering lunches and slow Provençal evenings rather than quick turnovers.

02The chef

David Carré's path to Montauroux ran through some of the country's most decorated kitchens: a spell at Château de Bagnols, a single MICHELIN Star address, then the three-starred Château des Crayères in Reims, and a stage as sous-chef for Jacques Lameloise in Chagny. Across these different experiences, David Carré acquired the mastery and the knowledge of a job properly done. From there he moved south, running the kitchen at the Hôtel Les 2 Rocs in Seillans before, in 2015, taking on his own house.

Insider tip

Open Tuesday dinner to Sunday lunch; closed Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday lunch. Closed late Oct–early Nov 2026.

He now cooks alongside his wife Aurélie, who runs the dining room, with a small brigade built around a chef de partie and a maître d'hôtel guiding guests through the menus. David Carré prepares dishes high in flavour, between classical and modern, from raw, local and seasonal produce.

03The cooking

The kitchen works in that familiar Provençal register of classic technique lightened by modern touches, built on ingredients bought from local producers and the farms around the Var. Cheese, for instance, is sourced from a single named address: the Ferme La Pastourelle in Châteaudouble. Earlier menus carried dishes such as compressed foie gras with local wine, lobster ravioli with sweetbreads, and a Rossini-style pigeon supreme, alongside hot-and-cold pineapple compositions — the kind of generous, produce-led plates that have made the address a fixture of regional guides. Uninformed, you could walk past without guessing that this is one of the best-known restaurants in this corner of the Var, where David Carré's traditional cuisine is as renowned as it is discreet.

04What to order

The Market square menu, served at lunch, runs to three or four courses with dishes such as a seasonal vegetable tartlet in chicken-juice vinaigrette, Norwegian salmon served as tartare and home-cured gravlax, a fish mousseline with lobster emulsion, and a slow-cooked beef and snail "escarboeuf" with spelt. Desserts stay simple: a seasonal fruit plate with home-made sorbet, or The Timeless, a white chocolate fondant with a soft caramel heart.

The Gourmet square menu is where Carré's training shows most clearly: poultry tiramisu with girolle emulsion, South-West IGP foie gras with candied fruits, langoustine ravioli in peppermint broth, pan-seared scallops with an iberian chorizo and olive-oil emulsion, John Dory with smashed chestnut squash, and a hare à la royale offered as a classic supplement. The cheese course draws again on La Pastourelle, finishing with a square of gold-leaf tricolour chocolate the house calls Our Classic, or a rice pudding with cep-caramel ice cream.

For a full table, the Carré du Plaisir is an eight-course menu kept secret until service, designed to be shared and discussed dish by dish rather than chosen from a printed card.

05The neighbourhood

Montauroux itself, nicknamed the balcony of the Estérel, is one of nine hilltop villages of the Pays de Fayence. Arriving at the foot of the village, visitors pass the big traditional washhouse supporting the main square above, and can admire the vast panorama from the south-facing belvedere. Cobbled lanes climb past fountains and old houses to the Saint-Barthélemy parish church and, beyond it, the Saint-Barthélemy Chapel, whose painted wooden panels once belonged to Christian Dior before he gave the building to the town. The village's two weekly markets, on Tuesday and Sunday mornings, and the nearby Lac de Saint-Cassien make an easy pairing with a long lunch at Le Carré d'Ange.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.