Thirty minutes after the uniformed driver greets you at Nice Airport and guides you toward the waiting sleek black Mercedes S Class Sedan, a sanctum of soft-scented cream leather and purring air-conditioning, you exit France without even realizing it and seamlessly cross the invisible border into the principality of Monaco to check in a few minutes later at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel, where a kind of earthly paradise awaits.
Those people checking in ahead of you who were behind you at immigration? They must have taken the Blade – the helicopter service between Nice Airport and Monaco, which takes just 7 minutes. With money, quite large amounts of it, come choices.
Bordered by France to the north, east and west and facing the Mediterranean Sea with Italy just a few miles further to the east, Monaco is the second-smallest sovereign state in the world after Vatican City. Small in land mass, big in beauty and high-octane living – an apt description perhaps for this microstate inextricably linked with Formula One – Monaco and its famed administrative area of Monte Carlo have in recent years been steadily adding a fifth “G” to its defining attributes of Princess Grace, Grand Prix, gambling and glamour, and that is gastronomy.
The prestigious Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer (SBM), which owns and operates Monaco’s top hotels, nightclubs and the world-renowned Monte-Carlo Casino, now claims seven out of the principality’s nine Michelin stars as its own.
With three of them, the pack is undoubtedly led by Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV at the fabled Hôtel de Paris, perhaps the ultimate “special occasion” restaurant. Alternately, still at the Hôtel de Paris, boasting one Michelin star and only slightly less grand, Le Grill on the hotel’s eighth floor will make certain that you never think of “barbecue” in quite the same way again.
Three minutes’ walk away, two powder-blue Bentleys sit outside Hôtel de Paris’ sister property, Hôtel Hermitage, almost asking to be stroked. I say “sister” property although, frankly, as sisters they couldn’t be more different. “In Monaco, you come to Hôtel de Paris to be seen, but you come to l’Hermitage to disappear,” as a former press officer of the SBM once told me.
You also happen to eat brilliantly at Hermitage’s Michelin-starred Pavyllon restaurant. Opened two years ago under the baton of French star chef Yannick Alleno, Pavyllon serves a lunch whose recollection still has me beaming. A glass of Eric Legrand “Bjorn” Extra Brut Champagne and barbagiuàns, traditional Monégasque baby-pastries stuffed with rice and chard, were the prelude to Obsiblue shrimp (the highly-prized, rare-breed native French “blue” prawn) with fennel brunoise and grated Parmesan, cheese soufflé with vin jaune, followed by an exceptional millefeuille of Wagyu beef. Sit at the bar and watch the open kitchen, the brigade working together like a silent corps de ballet, or perhaps choose a sunny table by the window or lunch on the terrace with a view of the sea. Whichever way, this is one dreamy restaurant.
At the Monte-Carlo Bay, the beachfront SBM property opened in 2005 where I was staying, and where the dancing fountains at the hotel entrance suggest a kind of mini Caesar’s Palace – an analogy that could be misleading, but is not entirely wrong – my suite was vast. With its California King bed, two giant TV screens and extended terrace with wicker chaise longues, it offered a superb view across the sparkling Med towards the smart resort town of Roquebrune, with Italy beyond. Down by the beach, the hotel also boasts indoor-outdoor pools, a sandy-bottom lagoon winding through the gardens, cypresses, waterfalls, ornamental and functional wooden bridges and a beautiful blue-domed cupola as its central point.
A facial at the halcyon space that is the resort’s Cinq Mondes spa restored my face to pre-pubescent silkiness – well, nearly. I certainly left feeling revitalized.
Monte-Carlo Bay was also the scene of another gastronomic experience I enjoyed in the principality, when I attended the soft reopening of Blue Bay, the latest restaurant in the SBM firmament. Helmed by Martinique-born chef Marcel Ravin, this one’s a stunner. Already holding two Michelin stars and now with a new organic concept based on the elements of fire, earth, metal, water and wood, the restaurant features fabulously complex, ingenious creations, like chicken Madras with hand-caught shrimp and Boucan d”Enfer rum; and pumpkin stew with lentils in turmeric, Oscietra caviar and a lacto-fermentation of aged black peppercorns. Both dishes are a riff on the Creole cooking of Chef Ravin’s native Martinique (with some clever turns learned from his grandmother.)
You don’t exactly eat shabbily in the hotel’s other restaurants either. Even breakfast is superb, with name recognition and food cooked to your specifications the order of the day. “Good morning, Mr. Wayne, your usual lightly scrambled eggs this morning, sir?” I was asked on only the second day of my stay.
Monaco might look like downtown Miami under skyscrapers in the odd corner, but nowhere on earth quite has its glamour quotient.
Atop Le Rocher, or the Rock – a synonym for Monaco itself – is the Royal Palace, where Prince Albert II, the beloved son of the late Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, presides. At 514 acres (around 5/8 the size of Central Park,) the principality is also the world’s most densely populated country. But size of course is far from everything, and Monaco brims over with manicured shopping streets and beautiful small parks and squares, virtually free of petty crime.
And for all its wealth, with one of the world’s largest concentrations of millionaires and billionaires, it is also oddly democratic: Everyone takes the bus. The No. 1 or 2 from Place Beaumarchais will take you up to Le Rocher for just a couple of euros, should you happen to have an appointment with the prince.
Back to relative reality, the 150-year-old Café de Paris, opposite the casino, is another democratic meeting place. Looking ravishing after a 19-month metamorphosis, the outdoor terrace is the spot to watch le tout Monaco parade. Inside, do check out the exquisite black marble, the ceiling lamps and those crown moldings that any Greenwich decorator would give eye teeth for. At night, it’s the second floor that comes into its own – a panoply of “beautiful people” and a panoramic view of the Place de Casino as you tuck into leeks in sauce gribiche, steak tartare and crèpes Suzette prepared tableside.
Raw, flambéed, or dressed to the nines in Chanel and Christian Louboutins, Monaco is like nowhere else — eye-popping, intimate, unmissable.
And you won’t come home hungry.
For more, visit montecarlosbm.com.
Travel Talk’s Jeremy Wayne is a luxury travel adviser with Superior Travel of New York. Contact him at jeremy@superiortravel.com.
