Andrew O.
Yelp
I have been coming to Pere Bise since I was a child, in the late 1960s. It is a tradition of my family to eat there, the way other families have the beach in summer, the cabin on the lake, or the annual ski trip. Expect no objectivity in this review therefore; it is not possible for me. I'd like you to believe me, because I want this restaurant to do well, but there's nothing I can do to remove my profound conflict.
It has gone through many changes over the years, but three things haven't changed: the setting, the atmosphere, and the commitment to the cuisine. The setting is what you can see in the pictures, spectacular hillsides, a beautiful village, the cleanest lake in Europe, and towering over all from the east, the first line of the French Alps in all all its stone fury, les Dents de Lanfon, le Lanfonnet, and the immensity of Tournette, blanketed in snow most of the year. The atmosphere, though, is hard to know until you get there. The village, the lake, the auberge, are elementally peaceful. The way the spot sits on the lake, the way the building sits on the lot, the way the guest feels in the restaurant and the rooms. It is, by origin, an "auberge," an inn, a place you are meant to find shelter on the road. From my earliest years, the Bise family, with Charlyne Bise as impeccable host, and her husband Francois, and later her daughter Sophie, as chefs, welcomed their occasional visitors as the most welcome guests, and their regular visitors as family. And by then, the restaurant already had three quarters of a century of history, won through a commitment to good food. It won fame in France in the 1950s when Francois' mother, Marguerite, became the the third woman ever to earn a Michelin three star rating ("worth a trip") and Francois won the third star again in the 1970s. The food was for the longest time the pinnacle of French old school cooking. I can still summon the flavors in my mouth now, most vividly the chicken (poularde de Bresse) bathed in tarragon sauce.
I won't list all those dishes now, though, since you mostly can't order them any more. In the fall of 2016, we heard the family had decided to sell the restaurant. I raced there to have a few last meals as a souvenir, nostalgia and sadness. I was happy, therefore, to hear they had sold to an aspiring chef, Jean Sulpice, who had already earned two stars, and who would be maintaining the restaurant's identity intact, "Auberge du Pere Bise - Jean Sulpice." We returned to sample the new fare at the beginning of April.
Jean and his wife, Magali, have redecorated very nicely, kept the welcoming atmosphere, and recommitted the institution to the highest standards in French cooking. Jean Sulpice' skill and creativity have re-earned the restaurant a second star.
His cooking focuses on several themes, preeminent among them local ingredients, local herbs especially, mountain cooking, and freshwater fish. All are hard to do and he does them very well. The ris de veau was wonderful, the lamb tasty, the steamed fera delicate, but the dish that has stuck in my mind the most was the veloute de chataignes, parmesan et truffe noire. Effectively a warm chestnut pudding, with a few more flavors added, included toasted pieces of truffle, with the mildest possible truffle flavor. Another, not a dish but a tiny "amuse bouche," was boeuf "Montbeliarde" marine aux herbes. Merely a sliver of partially dried beef wrapped around a tuft of different herbs. The treat was the herbs, wonderful flavors. Another thing to note is the cheese tray, laden with all sorts of flavors strong and delicate both, delivering on the recent scientific discovery that cheese is more addictive than heroin. In this case, all the cheeses are local, and yet the variety is extraordinary.
My advice is to order the gastronomic menu, the full monty of eight or nine courses, and get the wine pairings or at least a subset of the wine pairings to go with it. It will be an expensive evening, needless to say, but not expensive in the context of multi-star Michelin food. You will see the full range of the chef's, and the region's, poetry, and, since the volume of food served is modest in each course ... French haute cuisine is different now ... it won't flatten you. Pace yourself with the bread, but otherwise, enjoy the meal fully. To eat less than the full menu here, unless you're staying for a few days and will be going through the menu anyway, would be a false economy.
Enjoy the bar too, with a really nice selection of brandies and, the local specialty, chartreuse.
