Le Louis XV – Alain Ducasse: three stars won in 33 months

Le Louis XV - Alain Ducasse à l'Hôtel de Paris sits at the heart of Monte Carlo, its windows and terrace looking straight across Place du Casino towards the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Alain Ducasse took over the kitchen in May 1987, having been challenged by Prince Rainier III and the Société des Bains de Mer to win three Michelin stars within four years — a feat no hotel restaurant had ever achieved. Ducasse, then only 33, delivered it in 33 months. Nearly four decades on, the room still carries the gilt-and-fresco grandeur of the Belle Époque, now worked by chef Emmanuel Pilon, who continues the Mediterranean, produce-led register Ducasse built his reputation on. It holds Three MICHELIN Stars, a distinction it has carried, with only brief interruptions, since that first triumph, and remains the training ground from which much of the wider Ducasse empire has drawn its cooks.

01The room and the setting

The dining room is Belle Époque at full volume: a frescoed ceiling, gilded cornices and mirrors that have framed Monte Carlo society since the Hôtel de Paris itself opened in the nineteenth century. In 2015, designers Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku reworked the room as what they called a retro-futuristic counterpoint to that grandeur, taking their cue from the ceiling's central fresco — a nymph surrounded by cherubs, painted by Marie-Félix Hippolyte Lucas when the hotel was built. Its circular form is echoed below by a chandelier of eight hundred pieces of Murano glass, 7.5 metres across, made by French glass sculptor Aristide Najean.

At the centre of the room stands L'Office, a cherry-wood and glass service station with metal-bladed wings that open as dinner begins, revealing bread, oils and butter on one side and liqueurs and chocolates on the other. The cutlery is a 1906 design by Josef Hoffmann, recreated by Alessi; the chairs, upholstered in cream leather by master craftsman Pierre-Yves Le Floch, sit at round tables with mirror-polished steel legs. A portrait of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's official mistress, watches over it all, and when the terrace opens onto Place du Casino, the room extends into the Mediterranean light it has always claimed to serve.

02The chef

Emmanuel Pilon now leads the kitchen as chef de cuisine, working alongside Alain Ducasse and pastry chef Sandro Micheli. He succeeded Dominique Lory, who had trained for four years as chef de partie under Franck Cerutti at Le Louis XV before being promoted to head the kitchen in 2011. That lineage matters here: this is the restaurant from which, according to one trade account, over 85% of the chefs across Ducasse's wider group of more than thirty restaurants have passed through at some point in their careers.

Insider tip

Jacket required for dinner year-round; lunch Saturday-Sunday only; book well ahead.

It is also, by Ducasse's own description, where the group's culinary language first took shape — food, as he has put it, that tastes like the sun of the Riviera, built from fish landed locally, herbs and vegetables from the hinterland, and intense, reduced bouillons rather than heavy sauces.

03The cooking

The kitchen works a Mediterranean, produce-first register, grilling fish and meat over an open wood fire and letting single ingredients — a langoustine, an artichoke, a pigeon breast — carry the plate rather than disappear under technique. Among the dishes that have defined recent menus: Jardins de Provence, langoustine with chickpeas, a crispy artichoke with caviar, and pigeon breast from the Ferme du Renard Rouge, grilled and seasoned with Kampot pepper. Past menus have also carried U Stocafi à la Monégasque, the historic Monégasque stockfish dish, alongside lightly smoked blue lobster with wood-fired white asparagus and myrtle, and a line-caught turbot in a shellfish crust.

The approach is unapologetically classical in structure — a cheese cart still does the rounds before dessert — yet the plates themselves move with the seasons, built around whatever the Riviera's fishermen and market growers have brought in that morning.

04What to order

The rum baba is the house signature and has been since long before it became a Ducasse trademark across his group: soaked in a choice of rums, with vanilla, citrus peel and half-whipped Chantilly cream poured at the table. For something lighter to finish, a roasted grapefruit soufflé has appeared on the menu with Buddha's hand and a bergamote ice cream marbled with Menton lemon. Dinner closes with a tea trolley resembling a small mobile garden, from which leaves are snipped for infusion on request, and, for a run of recent winters, a parting gift of panettone made by the pastry team under Sandro Micheli.

05Wine and drinks

The cellar holds in the region of 400,000 bottles, one of the largest and most serious lists attached to any restaurant in the world. Pairings are built around it by the head sommelier — recent service has been guided by Maxime Pastor — who moves comfortably between grand Burgundy whites poured alongside grilled lamb and the Caribbean rums brought out specifically to finish the baba at the table.

06When to go and booking

Le Louis XV serves lunch on Saturday and Sunday and dinner from Thursday to Monday, according to the restaurant's own published hours. A jacket is required for dinner throughout the year; it remains appreciated, if slightly less strict, once the terrace onto Place du Casino opens for warmer months. Given the room's size and reputation, tables are tightly held — this is a dinner to plan weeks, not days, ahead.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.