La Marine

La Marine is a seafood restaurant on the harbor of L'Herbaudière, on the island of Noirmoutier in the Vendée. Chef Alexandre Couillon runs it with his wife Céline.

Couillon's parents, both from the island, bought a café facing the port, La Table d'Élise; his father had fished for shrimp and his mother worked as a seamstress. After hotel school on Noirmoutier, Couillon cooked for Georges Paineau in Questembert, for Michel Guérard at Eugénie-les-Bains and for Thierry Marx at Cordeillan-Bagès. In 1999 his parents asked him to take over their seasonal restaurant, and he and Céline renamed it La Marine. Business was slow until the magazine Le Point gave him a full page as the little prince of his island.

A Michelin star brought enough guests to keep the restaurant going, and the couple then bought the house next door. La Marine moved into it, while the old dining room became a bistro under the family's earlier name, La Table d'Élise. A second star followed, and in 2023 the guide gave La Marine its third. Gault&Millau named Couillon its chef of the year, and an episode of the Netflix series Chef's Table: France tells his story.

The tasting menu follows what the island's fishermen and the restaurant's own garden deliver each day, and Couillon keeps to produce from close by. He was among the first chefs in France to use ikejime, the Japanese method of killing fish, after a trip to Japan with Toru Okuda. A squid broth spoiled by an intern led him to pour it over a raw oyster on a large white plate, the first of many spare dishes about life on the island. The house itself is small, with white walls and blue shutters.