Restaurant Château de Courban — Michelin star done right
There are so many things that Michelin starred dining should be and there are so many things that it should not. Far too often, pretentious tradition and overcomplicated dishes pair with outrageous price tags to make for a wholly awkward and underwhelming experience. Somewhat surprisingly, given its position in the French countryside, Restaurant Chateau de Courban makes none of these mistakes. Instead, it combines luxury with superb service and inventively delicious food to make for the most pleasant of evenings.
Headed up by chef Nicholas Thomas, Chateau de Courban offers three different tasting menus of various lengths at €79, €119, and €149. Make no mistake, this is a very high price point but you can at least reconcile yourself in the knowledge that you get what you pay for. Combined with an extraordinarily vast and high-quality wine list and the attentive and completely informed service that you would expect of a restaurant like this, diners are left in no doubt as to where the money goes.
This is a restaurant of touches, small ones at times but things that make all the difference. The first shoutout of the day most go to the head sommelier at Courban. We chatted with him in depth for a good ten minutes about our preferences and the different varieties and vintages he had on offer. Personalisation is very much at the forefront. That, alongside beautifully homemade black garlic and vanilla butter, in-house baked bread, and amazing knives give you just a flavour of those little touches that make an impact.
The restaurant’s position in the French countryside also enables it to focus on locally sourced produce and Courban more than leans into that. Servers know where each and every element of all the dishes are from and the back of your menu even features a list of all suppliers and produces as well as how many kilometres away they are from the Chateau.
So, onto the food and the seven course ‘Menu Saveurs’ that we opted for. As is often the case, when you take into account amuse bouches and petits fours, this was more like nine or ten courses in the end so I won’t go into detail on each and every dish but here is a taste of what you can expect.
Things kick off whilst you are still enjoying a dish on the terrace with those aforementioned amuse bouches and although some caviar tartlets were intriguing, one nibble stood out. Due to its fragility, you have to take the foie gras wrapped grape straight off the waiter’s plate and eat it in one: the only way to describe it is an explosion of flavours. It plays with the senses in the best possible way and the sour grape just enhances the salty flavours of the foie gras for a fascinating mouthful.
That game of the senses becomes somewhat of a theme that continues with the first dish when sat at your table inside. This is a mousse that packs as many different textures and temperatures as feasibly possible into one dish. Of course, the cheese mousse itself is smooth and flavoured with trout throughout. At the bottom of the dish you’ll find ice cold chopped beetroot and a powdered beet topping just finishes it all off.
Next up is another combination of textures with a beef carpaccio dish. Here, the addition of cucumber brings that crunch and lightens a rich butter jus along with a raspberry garnish that adds sweetness.
Another dish and yup, you’ve guessed it, another blend of smooth and crunchy. This time, a trout omelette is sandwiched in-between the lightest of biscuit crackers — this isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to blow your mind in any meaningful way but the addition of the biscuit does hold together the omelette pleasingly. The star of the show is in fact the garnish: a pea purée is topped by perhaps the freshest tasting peas I have ever encountered (courtesy of a local farm of course), and caviar.
Appropriately, given the focus on local farmers and producers, Chef Thomas’ signature dish is the ‘Vegetable Moment’. Whilst the rest of the menu is everchanging, this is ever-present and constantly evolving to use the most in season vegetables. The resulting melange of cooked and raw, pickled and fresh, soft and crunchy, is a feast for the eyes and the senses. In fact, it reminded me of one of my first ever reviews at the vegan supper club Table 13 (see below) in Oxford. Dishes like this are all about redefining what vegetables can do and be.
The same is true of the carrot garnish with the final savoury course of veal. This time, a whole carrot is wrapped in herbs such as basil and fennel and partners the most lightly dusted of veal fillets you could imagine. The meat truly melts in the mouth and the carrot’s flavour profile enhances it even further with the fennel taking centre stage. Unlike many restaurants, all the micro herbs and garnishes here have a place — nothing is redundant.
To finish there is, of course, dessert (and a cheese trolley too if you have room) and even the sweet courses can’t escape the game that Chef Thomas is playing with you. Here, there’s an intense chocolate mousse (room temperature) topped by a cocoa cracker basket which holds a fennel sorbet (cold). Then, a warm chocolate emulsion is poured tabled side and seeps slowly into the two other elements. The fennel sorbet really didn’t do it for me here, even if I could see the intention I think that a more conventional herb such as mint would have been better placed with the chocolate. The emulsion in particular though was sensational and as a diner you can appreciate the art of the intention.
And that art of invention and intention is probably where best to finish. Chateau de Courban combines so many of the things that make Michelin starred dining great such as sensational wine lists and encyclopaedic waiters whilst avoiding the worst of its bad tropes. There is no stuffy atmosphere, no pointless additions to dishes, and no pretension. The focus is on flavour and boy do those flavours shine.
