Les Santons – a Grimaud family table since 1962

In the stone heart of medieval Grimaud, a short climb above the yachts of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, Les Santons has kept the same address since Claude Girard, a chef who had worked at Paris's Lucas Carton, bought the house with his wife and opened its doors in 1962. For decades the dining room, set inside an elegant Provençal residence, carried two Michelin stars, and the restaurant remains selected in the MICHELIN Guide today — a rare case of an address built as a family affair rather than a single chef's project. Stéphanie, the founders' daughter, has run the floor and the wine list since 2001; her husband Julien Allègre, who learned the kitchen at Claude Girard's side before taking it over in 2007, now signs the cooking. Between the crackling fireplace of the winter salon and a terrace that catches the gulf light, Les Santons still serves the kind of generous, produce-led Provençal cooking that built its name six decades ago.

01The room and the setting

Les Santons occupies a maison de maître inside the ramparts of old Grimaud, the hilltop village whose 11th-century castle still looks down over the gulf and the wooded slopes of the Maures. The restaurant seats 35 guests, a scale that keeps the room feeling domestic rather than grand.

A cosy salon built around a working fireplace doubles as the winter dining room, while a small terrace looks out over the Gulf of Saint-Tropez in summer. The house can also be privatised for banquets and seminars, with outdoor capacity stretching to larger garden receptions.

02The family and the chef

Claude Girard, once a chef at Lucas Carton in Paris, bought the Grimaud house with his wife in 1962, and the restaurant quickly became one of the gulf's landmark tables. His daughter Stéphanie took over the dining room and cellar in 2001, trained from childhood in the rhythms of a family kitchen.

Insider tip

Open evenings year-round, weekend lunches; booking by phone advised, especially in summer.

Her husband Julien Allègre has run the kitchen since 2007. Trained at the hotel school in Montauban and in starred houses before returning as Girard's sous-chef, Allègre now carries his mentor's legacy as both pupil and successor, continuing the house's reputation under Stéphanie's direction in the room.

03The cooking

The kitchen builds its monthly-changing carte around seasonal, short-circuit produce from growers who have supplied the house for decades, favouring flavour over flourish. The style stays Mediterranean and French at its core: a recent review described a line-caught sea bass marinated with vanilla, vine peach and aloe vera, a Rossini-style saddle of lamb, a red-fruit millefeuille, and whole fish sold by weight.

04What to order

Starters have included purple Provençal artichokes with hazelnuts, a crab tartare with passion-fruit jelly and mango coulis, and a chilled mushroom velouté shaved with summer truffle. Among the house's long-running specialities are a fine tart of scallops with caviar, langoustines with mango and girolles, and a line-caught sea bass with Baeri caviar and orange-glazed artichokes.

Mains run from a saddle of Sisteron lamb roasted with wild thyme, carved for two, to sweetbreads with little croutons and Champagne-poached abalone. To finish, the kitchen still turns out its signature rum baba with vanilla Chantilly, alongside a strawberry pavlova with white-chocolate and lime ganache mousse.

05Wine and drinks

Stéphanie oversees the list herself, built from small, family-run vineyards across France's wine regions rather than the usual Riviera roster of big names, giving the cellar a more personal, growers' character than its postcode might suggest.

06When to go and the neighbourhood

The restaurant has traditionally opened every evening for dinner and Friday to Sunday for lunch, widening to lunch service on Saturdays and Sundays with the summer season. Booking ahead by telephone is advised, particularly in high season when the terrace fills early.

Grimaud itself rewards an evening on foot before or after dinner: cobbled lanes climb to the ruined 11th-century castle, the Romanesque Saint-Michel church sits at the village's heart, and below on the water, Port Grimaud's canal town, designed by the architect François Spoerry, offers a very different, modern face of the same gulf.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.