Flocons de Sel

Flocons de Sel is a restaurant and hotel with three Michelin stars on the route du Leutaz, above Megève in the French Alps. Behind it are the chef Emmanuel Renaut and his wife, Kristine.

Renaut worked as a commis for Christian Constant at the Crillon, ran the kitchen at Claridge's in London for a year and spent four years as second chef to Marc Veyrat at the Auberge de l'Eridan. He opened Flocons de Sel in the village of Megève in 1997, in a former pizzeria, and later moved it to a restored farmhouse of the 1800s up the Leutaz road, while the old premises became a bistro, Flocons Village. The stars came one at a time, the third in the 2012 guide, and he was also named a Meilleur Ouvrier de France. Renaut calls the restaurant his culinary laboratory, a place to tell the story of the mountains through what grows around them.

The cooking draws on local produce and on the landscape of the Alps. Dishes have included gnocchi of parsnip and beetroot with a horseradish consommé and Beaufort cheese, venison fillet with blackberries and fir, and veal head with a vinegar sabayon and truffles. The critic Gilles Pudlowski placed Renaut among a generation of chefs reinventing terroir through local produce. Fir and Beaufort on the plate bring the forest and the alpine pastures straight into the dining room.

The hotel belongs to Relais & Châteaux and spreads its rooms across several chalets and small wooden mazots, with a pool, lounges and a spa at about 1,300 m (4,265 ft). Meals are served in the dining room or on a terrace looking out at the surrounding peaks. A kitchen working for only a small number of covers at each service gives the cooking the attention of a much larger brigade.