Anne-Sophie Pic: I’m holding back on getting more Michelin stars
France’s Savoyard region is wonderful for foraging and Michelin-starred food. Olivia Palamountain touched down to meet lauded French chef Anne-Sophie Pic
It’s high summer in Megève, an alpinetown in the Savoyard region of France. It is one of those pretty as a picture, pinch-me places that remind you why the French do life best; all sun-kissed slopes melting into valleys blanketed in acid green, ablaze with wildflowers and dotted with bijou wooden chalets. Established as a ski destination by Noémie de Rothschild in the 1920s, by the 1950s Megève was so renowned as a playground for the rich and famous that Jean Cocteau referred to it as “the 21st arrondissement of Paris”.
It’s not all retro charm: the town’s Mediaeval centre has an enduring relationship with one of the world’s wealthiest dynasties that lends the resort a gilded edge. The de Rothschilds own 1,112 acres of prime real estate in the town, home to the only golf course in the area, a slew of excellent restaurants and a particularly charming Four Seasons property, the town’s only ski-in, ski-out hotel, located at the foot of the Mont D’Arbois.
Built in local timber and stone, the 55- room property feels more private chalet than hotel, designed and decorated by Ariane de Rothschild herself and filled with a personal collection of art and curiosities. Impressive details include a vast art-deco style spa – a tribute to Noémie – and a wine cellar with glass staircase where some bottles ring in at more than 300,000 Euro.
There’s also La Dame de Pic – Le 1920, a restaurant by legendary French chef Anne-Sophie Pic. When it was awarded a Michelin star less than a year after its 2020 debut, Pic earned the title of the most highly decorated Michelin-starred female chef in the world. Pic appears unfazed by her achievement when we meet in the vast Mont Blanc suite of Four Seasons Megève. Warm and jovial, her mischievous eyes twinkling behind thick-rimmed spectacles, she’s the antithesis of the egomaniacal superstar chef trope.
With nine Michelin stars under her belt (three in Valence, two in Lausanne, two in London, one in Paris and one in Megève) it feels as if she has nothing to prove. Anne-Sophie Pic’s love for the outdoors forms the bones of her food philosophy. “I want people to experience a sense of place when they eat my food,” she says. “It makes people happy.”
The magic ingredient in Pic’s kitchen, however, is always “emotion”
Now professionally linked to Megève as a region, Pic has taken her knowledge of the terroirs and its produce to the next level and trained in specialist foraging, getting her close to the nature she loves so much. “It’s truly a lifetime’s work,” explains Pic. “Plants change at high altitude. I’ve come across so many inspirational new flavours. I used to stare up at the sky and now I’m always focused on the ground.”
Four Seasons can arrange guided forage hikes into the hills. Trails suit all fitness levels and lead directly from the chalet up into the mountains; come summer, hike along a via ferrata, meander through meadows on horseback, or borrow an e-bike and explore sun-dappled forests. The winter season serves up some of the finest skiing in the Alps, plus heli-skiing, dog-sledding, glacier snowshoeing and hot-air ballooning.
The 18-hole Mont d’Arbois links golf course, located moments from the hotel, is one of the oldest in the region, and serves an excellent bistro-style lunch. There’s also paragliding, canyoning and climbing. Even closer to home is the hotel spa with thermal pool with sub-aqua sound system, sauna, hammam, hair salon and a nail bar. After a day in the mountains there’s nothing quite like a massage from healing hands to tie a restorative ribbon around the day.
But the laziest way to find the fruit of the region is at the restaurant. La Dame d Pic – Le 1920 is comfortable and refined, with a lofty, vaulted ceiling and views of the mountains adding drama in the dining room, buoyed by wafts of otherworldly aromas drifting from the open kitchen. With the doors to the terrace flung open on a balmy evening, the boundary between inside and the outdoors is blurred, allowing the scent of summer and the chime of cowbells to fill the air, and the odd pop of a champagne cork.
The six-course menu showcases local proteins and dairy, centering largely around freshwater fish, game and cheese. It gives pride of place to plants and herbs, gathered either from the wild or from the hotel’s garden.
You won’t be surprised to hear the food is remarkable. Pine buds feature in a starter of gin-marinated fera, a freshwater fish, lending a delicate herbal edge to the white fish carpaccio, enhanced by a lactic vinaigrette made with marigold oil and smoked pickerel’s eggs. Pic’s signature ‘berlingots’, Turkish manti-esque dumplings that appear in various guises at every Pic restaurant, ooze with beaufort and absinthe, the intensity offset by a zingy tomato broth infused with aromatic meadowsweet and ground ivy. Local char arrives hidden under a coffee and lovage emulsion, with undertones of parsley and anise.
Pic also throws in impeccably sourced ingredients from further afield. Hojicha tea from Japan goes with roasted pigeon, blackcurrant buds and cacao nibs; Madagascan vanilla is paired with a brie de Maux, curious marriages that were meant to be and highlight an affinity for creating dialogue between cultures.
In Pic’s kitchen the journey varies but the destination is always the same: “flavours, flavours, flavours.” Contrary to the tenets of traditional French cuisine, Pic uses scant butter in her cooking, hardly any cream and little sugar. Even her signature dessert of millefeuille blanc is feather-light with only a hint of sweetness from leatherwood honey with eucalyptus, offset by wild blackcurrants.
“When I first started in the kitchen I opened my mind to other arts for inspiration, instead of being focused on straight up cooking,” says Pic. “Cuisine is chemistry, whether you make a distillation of alcohol, a sauce, a wine or a perfume, the process is all linked.”
Powerful flavours are distilled into delicate dashi broths, humble vegetables are juiced and reduced into explosive concentrates and sauces are made using a technique called enfleurage, using fat to capture the fragrant essences in plants. The magic ingredient in Pic’s kitchen, however, is always “emotion”.
Anne-Sophie Pic’s litany of Michelin stars somehow feels less surprising after eating this incredible food. But I’m surprised to learn she isn’t aiming for a second at La Dame de Pic – Le 1920 – yet. “I asked my chef [Alexandre Alves Pereira] to hold back a bit when we launched, actually,” says Pic, wearing a coy smile. “I didn’t want two stars, too quickly.”