Culinary Thrills and Divine Hotels in the Shadow of Mont Blanc
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the times Saturday July 28 2018 the times Saturday July 28 2018 32 Travel Travel 33 The Hôtel Royal in Évian Luxury travel Auberge du Père Bise The Hôtel Royal responded by building guesthouses, is unpromising. The traffic, as always, is then pukka hotels. heavy. Even when la circulation thins out The architect responsible for the the views are desultory, a kind of hilly Royal’s refurb has managed to keep the suburbia interspersed with light industry. Culinary thrills Victorian grandeur while adding neat This is not the loveliest chunk of France. touches of modernity. Put it this way, As I am about to abandon hope, the there’s still lots of marble, mirrors and warehouses disappear, the autoroute frescoes, but the steam rooms and hot veers drunkenly left and grows stilts as it tubs have wifi, and are now big enough speeds up a steep green valley. Ahead of for entire football squads (and their me drifting clouds part to show shining and divine hotels Wags). It isn’t cheap; it is certainly lavish. white peaks, glittering like the sugared And then there’s the Brand New Boat. cakes in Monsieur Rigollot’s marvellous As part of its attempt to attract the pâtisserie in Annecy. And in the middle, world’s ultra-rich (a jolly successful the biggest of them all, one of the effort, judging by the serenely unworried highest summits in Europe, Mont Blanc. clientele sunning themselves around the The revamped Terminal Neige, a near in the shadow pool) the hotel has commissioned its neighbour of Mont Blanc, dates from the own intergalactic hydrofoil lake-rocket, 19th century, and is reached by a fire to speed its guests from Geneva airport, engine-red, rack-and-pinion railway and avoid all the snarly traffic. (you cannot drive up, although you can You can also take this interstellar feasibly hike). Inside, it is chic-yet-rustic, of Mont Blanc jetamaran off for a day trip. As I board hipster-meets-hermit, cosy with a tinge I feel, pleasantly, like a cackling James of trendy. Outside it ain’t the cutest. In Bond supervillain heading for his fact, with its foursquare brooding youngest chef in France with a Michelin great for climbing, hiking, paragliding, or toffee (I think). My bouche is amused. undersea lair. In fact I am zooming at granite, it could be taken for a prison. star and, as he explains, it was also “the Lake — if you are Sulpice — running, uphill, Then comes the tasting menu. It’s a 56mph (that’s not a typo), on top of the But then it’s not meant to be looked at, Sean Thomas visits Geneva SWITZ. highest star in the world!” That is to say, at 5am. There are round-the-lake phrase I often dread, especially in Need to water, to the cute but très touristy little you’re meant to sit here, either in the his restaurant at Val Thorens at 2,300m, Évian-les- footpaths and bike lanes. Otherwise you France, where they take these things far town of Yvoire, with its cuckoo clock glass-walled restaurant (try the scrummy three magnificent Nernier was so high that water boiled at 85C, Bains can sail, swim, yacht, pedalo, paddleboat, too seriously, and where, all too often, it know shops selling local crafts lovingly sausages with polenta) or, weather hotels and meets a not 100C, meaning that Sulpice had to Yvoire and fish for crayfish and perch, or you means 12 tiny courses of increasingly handmade by machines in China. permitting, out on the terrace, from painstakingly adjust all his recipes. Lake FRANCE can forage, like Sulpice, for mushroom overambitious WTF, commonly hiding My advice? Spend no more than half where you just stare at everything else. Now, after years of hard yakka in the Annecy Chamonix and herbs in the nearby forests. If you’re under foam, stretched out over four an hour here in the lanes and gardens The views are bewilderingly majestic. Michelin-star chef peaks, the chef and his family have come Annecy feeling lazy, you can just sit on the hours that feel like a pointlessly Sean Thomas was a guest (it is rather comely), then walk or cycle to Directly in front of the hotel is a down to lake level to reopen a revered Duingt Mt Blanc decking of the terrace, sip chilled expensive term at a bad university. of Savoie Mont Blanc peaceful, nearly-as-pretty Nernier, a mile vertiginously spired mountain, which in the French Alps old restaurant, Auberge du Père Bise, champagne and gaze across the water as This is not Sulpice’s style. Service is (savoie-mont-blanc.com) down the coast. Lord Byron and Shelley resembles a mile-high gothic cathedral and turn it into a gastronomic hotel. The 10 miles the setting sun throws golden lances at brisk yet relaxed, the food comes with once stayed here. At the time they were audaciously sliced in two by Damien auberge is at the lakeshore end of the ancient châteaux in medieval Duingt, fine and deliciously obscure Savoyard Where to stay living in the notorious Villa Diodati near Hirst on steroids. Way down below is SAVOIE t’s about the time that the chef Jean charming, Hansel-and-Gretel-y village some of them owned by the same whites and reds (ever heard of the Auberge du Père Bise Geneva, where, in one famously stormy the famous glacier, first “discovered” in Sulpice veers off the sunlit, lakeside, of Talloires. It’s one of three recently families for 1,000 years. Yes, 1,000 years. local mondeuse grape? Me neither). (perebise.com) has summer, they took laudanum, got drunk, 1741 by two Englishmen, dressed as narrow Alpine road in our 1970s rejuvenated hotels — none more than That may make the 100-year-old Moreover, all the dishes are excellent, doubles from €229 had threesomes, and 18-year-old Mary maharajahs to “impress the natives”. open-top Renault dune buggy and 90 minutes’ drive from another — that ITALY auberge look positively youthful, but it some are outstanding: pike quenelle in (£204) a night; the Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Behind it all looms Mont Blanc, a starts hurtling across an open field I’m exploring, making a neat tour of the still has a historic reputation to uphold watercress juice with trout caviar, which 11-course tasting menu Byron and Shelley hated Nernier and constant yet near-invisible presence: like with the clear intention of driving meadows-and-mountains of this eastern — a fact underlined by the 30, 40 and looks like a pale yellow ice hockey puck costs €210pp. Hôtel said that it had some of the “worst beds” a distant and generally benign autocrat us all straight off the cliff and into French region of Savoie. 60-year-old Michelin guides nailed to made of softly condensed ether with Terminal Neige Royal in Évian-les-Bains in Europe, although Shelley also noted who occasionally executes everyone Ithe glittery waters of Lake Annecy that “At first,” Sulpice says, leaping from one new wall, praising it for its food. Yes, amber pearls (and invented just today, has B&B doubles that it had one of the prettiest boys. with an avalanche. For walkers it is quite I remember a wise old insight: all chefs the car, and guiding me into the beamed, this place has a brilliant location (and 23 the waitress tells me, with a hint of rolled from €382 a night Today the town is quietly rich and the destination. Through the afternoon I are just a tiny bit mad, and the best are waterside hotel-restaurant, “I was agreeable, mostly lakeview rooms), but eyes); Piedmontese ravioli stuffed with ludicrously pretty old Annecy, the main virtually imperial magnificence of the (hotel-royal-evian.com). discreetly hedonistic, with its golden lads happily hike the scree beneath the peaks, often totally fruit-loop-en-croûte. uncertain whether to get involved. The in the end it is all about the tucker. Annecy snails and a harmonious town hereabouts. It’s a delightful if Hôtel Royal in Évian-les-Bains, on the The boat from Évian to and lasses jumping off the quay into the my face burning in the sun, even as the At the last moment, however, he veers auberge is so famous, it was once run by To be honest, I’m concerned for quintet of herbs; empty boiled eggshell well-touristed nook of antique France, mountainous southern shores of Lac Yvoire is €450 for ten cooling waters, to escape the fierce rocks are sintered with scars of snow. the car from the wooded precipice, only the second woman in the world to Sulpice. He already has two stars and refilled with saffron, crayfish and lovely with be-swanned canals, medieval Léman (Lake Geneva to you and me). people. Terminal Neige summer heat. Shelley — and Byron, for When I get back, I eat more Savoyard heading instead for a hedge of tall get three stars. But then I looked at the he’s the Gault & Millau guide’s chef globs of goo (I hope I’m not getting townhouses and Italianate piazzas, and The French mega-corp Danone, near Chamonix has half- that matter — would have found the sausages, drink more mondeuse wine, sit flowers. Then he leans from the rusty car, location . and I could not resist.” of the year. He could have sat on his too technical). a street market boasting a brilliant which owns Evian water, also owns this board doubles from €130 new prospects most inviting.