Pavyllon Monte-Carlo – the counter that unseated Vistamar

Pavyllon Monte-Carlo, un restaurant de Yannick Alléno sits inside the Hôtel Hermitage on Square Beaumarchais, in the rooms that once held the hotel's Vistamar restaurant. It is the Riviera outpost of a concept Alléno built in Paris at Pavillon Ledoyen: a long counter facing an open kitchen, where the kitchen's choreography becomes the entertainment and the old formality of grand dining is set aside. Guests sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers, talk to the chefs plating in front of them, and eat Mediterranean-leaning dishes built on local fish, garden vegetables and Alléno's signature sauce-work. It holds one MICHELIN Star, the Guide's recognition of a kitchen that treats counter dining as seriously as any formal salon. Behind the apparent informality sits real technical rigour — cold extraction, fermentation, a long-standing habit of sweetening desserts with birch sap instead of refined sugar — all folded into a menu that changes with the seasons on the Hermitage's own doorstep above Port Hercule.

01The room and the setting

The interior designer Chahan Minassian built the room around a single gesture: a vast elliptical counter in ceruse oak, ringed by velvet-and-suede seating in grey-green tones, facing straight onto the open kitchen. Floor-to-ceiling windows wash the dining room in shades of turquoise and azure that echo the sea outside. In warmer months the room opens onto a planted terrace styled like a Mediterranean garden, with the Rock of Monaco and the marina framed beyond the balustrade.

02The chef

Yannick Alléno, who had amassed thirteen MICHELIN Stars across his restaurants worldwide by the time Pavyllon Monte-Carlo opened, first tested the counter-gastronomy format at Pavillon Ledoyen in Paris at the end of 2019, before bringing it south in 2022 into the space the Hermitage had previously given to Vistamar. The opening brigade was led on the ground by executive chef Guillaume Bellayer, with pastry overseen by Maxime Vaslin. Day-to-day command of the kitchen has since passed to Hendry Angwe Mezah, a chef trained at Paris's 39V who joined Alléno's houses in 2015, worked the pass at the triple-starred Alléno Paris and helped open Pavyllon Monte-Carlo before Alléno entrusted him with the Paris institution Prunier in 2023; he has since returned to run the Monaco counter.

Insider tip

Open daily; lunch and dinner; Sunday brunch; terrace seasonal.

03The cooking

The kitchen builds its menu on Riviera produce — Mediterranean fish, market-garden vegetables grown at the Hermitage itself — filtered through Alléno's long-running technical preoccupations: cold-water extraction for sauces, fermentation for depth, and a practice of using birch sap rather than refined sugar to sweeten desserts. Signatures include the Œuf Badaboum, a poached egg built around caviar and smoked cream with a shower of fresh croutons, and a steamed cheese soufflé lifted with a touch of chlorophyll.

04What to order

Beyond the Œuf Badaboum, the carte runs to a Wagyu beef feuille à feuille built with button mushrooms, capers and their own concentrated jus, and a wood-fire grilled blue-tail lobster finished with ginger butter. To close, the chocolate soufflé is flambéed simply with amaretto at the table, and in season a tart of Menton lemon closes the meal on a sharper, citrus note.

05Wine and drinks

The wine list leans on an unusually generous by-the-glass selection, curated for a room built around conversation rather than ceremony, with service at the counter and in the dining room directed by deputy director Carlos Guimaraes and his team.

06When to go and booking

Pavyllon is open every day, for lunch and dinner, with a weekday express counter menu, a five-course Menu Monte-Carlo, a longer Menu Hermitage, and on Sundays a Brunch en Liberté that includes a glass of champagne. The terrace, with its view over the port and the Rock, is the draw from spring through autumn; for atmosphere, the counter seats remain the best vantage point on the kitchen's work.

07The neighbourhood

The restaurant sits inside the Belle Époque Hôtel Hermitage, a few steps from Casino Square, with the harbour of Port Hercule and the old town of Monaco-Ville visible from the terrace — a short walk from the heart of Monte-Carlo's gambling and shopping quarter, yet set back in its own quiet garden square.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.