Starry Starry Night in Monaco

And something to make you laugh.

Don’t understand this? Put it into Google Translate. I found it hanging on the wall in the wonderful Rouge in Nice, and couldn’t resist taking a picture.

(If you would, for some reason, care to buy an apron printed with this phrase, I found one here.)

The room at Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco is very grand. The service is very correct. The food is pure luxury. You know, from the moment you enter the wonderfully old-fashioned room that you are in three-star territory. And although they printed up this menu as a farewell gift (along with a superb chocolate panettone), they fed us many more dishes than appear here.

This first dish of lightly marinated giant prawns in the most delicate aspic of fish and saffron topped with caviar was absolutely irresistible. A dream of a dish, even more beautiful in the mouth than you imagine it will be.

We ate dozens of different kinds of squashes and pumpkins during our sojourn in the south, cooked in many different ways. None was more impressive than this.

Have I mentioned that the salt and pepper set was so beautiful that I was seriously tempted to steal it? (I have never seen a more attractive mortar and pestle.)

The obligatory blue lobster (they’re sweeter than those of Maine)…

and the John Dory, after it had been deboned at the table. The little creature on the side is sea cucumber. There seems to be a new move to eat previously ignored seafood like this and the sea anemone served with the squash.

The start of the dessert parade…

….followed by this chocolate, pistachio wild pear creation. (I’m sorry to say I stopped taking pictures after this, so you’re missing the baba au rhum and the chocolates….)

Tomorrow…. on to Mirazur. You won’t be disappointed. If there’s more beautiful food anywhere in the world, I have yet to find it.