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||The restaurant at Auberge Quintessence was a wonderful experience. The|cuisine is modern, interesting and very skillfully crafted. Wine|selection well curated and pairings make sense. Service is friendly,|chairs comfortable, tables quite large with ample space between them.|The view is astonishing.||Usually, I would not write more on Tripadvisor than the above text,|since I am a professional restaurant critic and spare my energy for|the newspaper I am employed by. In that paper I have written more than|2.000 newspaper pages about good restaurants during the last 21 years,|so I am not easily impressed. But Quintessence impresses me, and I|wish to support the place, as I feel they are showing a new way to go,|in these trying times where restaurant and kitchen staff is so hard to|find.||I have been travelling in France frequently for almost 30 years and|watched how the gastronomic level seems to have declined. Or maybe it|is just that I have gotten more demanding.||To try and assess the situation and compare the old stars the the|present time, I recently dined at 3 Michelin star Precatalan and|Ledoyen, 1-star Laserre, Tour d’Argent, Maxims, Chez l’Ami Louis, La|Coupole and Bofinger. Several of these I have visited more than once.|This is what I compare Quintessence against, and of course|Quintessence’s gastronomy cannot match Precatalan or Ledoyen, nor can|the ambiance of the mentioned historic places be challenged by the|very modest dining room of Quintessence (apart from the view which|challenges Tour d’Argent..).||But nevertheless, I find the precision (not the produce, this is no|place for caviar etc.) in cooking quite close to these two famous|restaurants, and that is impressive since Quintessence is such a small|setup. The chef is also owner, and in the kitchen he has only one cook|to help him. The chef’s wife is also the Maitre d’ and waiter, and|when I finished the meal and went to visit the kitchen to thank the|chef, I found him and the wife busy cleaning the dishes helped by|their daughter of 8-10 years!||Such devotion is astonishing, and this is my point: One thing is to|operate a famous restaurant with lots of staff and charging high|prices. Another is for a husband- and wife team to operate an auberge|at a distant mountain top delivering very fine and interesting cuisine|with both attentive and friendly service.||Of course, they need to be practical so there is no á la carte just|one menu, and everybody sit down to eat at 19.30. But if you are happy|with that, I will warmly recommend the Auberge Quintessence.||The settings are wonderful high in the mountains, and you will|especially appreciate it if you are a biker, since there was an almost|constant traffic of motorbikes on the roads. I am no longer a biker,|and although I used to love the sound of my big motorbike, I now find|it very annoying, especially on a mountain top. But I look forward to|a visit in the wintertime, hoping there wont be a lot of snow scooters|instead.|
