Name: Le Louis XV
Address: Monte-Carlo

A three-star dining room inside the Hôtel de Paris on the Place du Casino in Monte-Carlo, where Alain Ducasse set out his Mediterranean cooking in 1987 and soon made it the first hotel restaurant in the world to hold three Michelin stars, the kitchen now run day to day by his long-time lieutenant Emmanuel Pilon.

By Dimitris Stathopoulos

The cooking

Mediterranean, and built almost entirely on the produce of the coast around it. Ducasse opened the room in 1987 with an argument unusual for a palace dining room of the period: let the ingredient lead, keep the plate simple, and look to the Riviera and the Ligurian coast rather than to Paris. Vegetables, the day's catch off the Mediterranean, olive oil and the herbs of Provence carry the cooking, worked with precision rather than display. The kitchen keeps its own lines to growers and fishermen along the coast and turns with the season. Alain Ducasse sets the direction and his long-time lieutenant Emmanuel Pilon holds the pass, with the pastry its own chapter. The setting is a gilded Belle Époque room off the hotel's lobby, chandeliers and marble and the grand register of the principality, and the service keeps the formality the room asks for without tipping into stiffness.

Why it is in VANE

It holds three Michelin stars in the Michelin Guide France 2026, which covers Monaco, a level it first reached in 1990, some 33 months after opening, when it became the first hotel restaurant anywhere to hold three and Ducasse, at 33, the youngest chef to have won them at the time. That history is not the whole case. The argument is the cooking: a kitchen in the most gilded square in Europe that chose to put the vegetable and the local catch at the centre of the plate and has held that line for decades, through changes of chef at the pass and shifts of fashion above it. It is the room that rewrote what a hotel dining room could be, and it still cooks the coast it sits on rather than a borrowed script. A researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and Michelin's listing, not a first-hand VANE visit.

Where

Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, Place du Casino, Monaco

Kitchen

Alain Ducasse, the pass held by Emmanuel Pilon

Michelin

Three stars, Michelin Guide France 2026 (covers Monaco), first won 1990

Style

Mediterranean, built on Riviera produce and the day's catch

Best for

The seasonal menu, in the Belle Époque room

VANE selection. Chosen with a critic's eye and judged independently. It's here because we judged it, not because it paid.
On this profile: a researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and reporting, not a claim of a first-hand visit. Where we have eaten there, the review says so.
Image: original VANE artwork; photography to follow.

Le Louis XV

The cooking

Why it is in VANE

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