French Restaurant Review: Frenchie, Biarritz

Fifteen years after opening his smash-hit Paris bistro Frenchie, chef Grégory Marchand has fallen in love with the Basque Country and has opened Frenchie Biarritz.

“The quality of the produce here is just spectacular,” says Marchand, who signs the menu at the recently opened Frenchie Biarritz in the just renovated Hotel Regina Experimental Biarritz. “The Basque Country has a fascinating terroir, because it’s coastal and mountainous at the same time. This means an amazing larder, including line-caught hake from Saint-Jean-de-Luz; Banka trout, which I think is the best trout in France; pork from the Noir Gascon breed; gorgeous cheeses like Tomme de Brebis Basque and Ossau-Iraty, and even distinctive locally grown seasonings, like piment d’Espelette, a pepper that has an intriguingly smoky, winey flavour and a perfect amount of heat.”

Designed by Paris-based designer Dorothée Meilichzon, the dining room has natty nautical look created by red-and-white striped upholstery on the banquettes, white-painted wooden chairs and the rounded Art Deco frames around large mirrors. In good weather, there’s service on an adjacent terrace with views of the sea. “My idea was to create a modern Basque bistro idiom for the Biarritz restaurant. I wanted to frame the produce with freshness and juxapositions that would emphasise its natural tastes and textures,” Marchand told me when I chatted with him before dinner here recently (the restaurant is open daily for dinner and for brunch on Sundays).

The five-course €95 menu changes seasonally and is assiduously local. Since we were four, we were able to sample most of it too. The standout among the starters was the mackerel flamed to a juicy succulence on Japanese binchotan charcoal and then garnished with pike-perch eggs and glasswort, a crunchy salt-rich beach vegetable. Salsify roasted in honey and garnished with a coffee-flavoured sabayon and fine slices of smoked pork belly was elegantly rustic as well. Among the main courses, lacquered Kintoa pork (Kintoa is a local breed of pig) cooked in a crust of breadcrumbs and served with a tartlet of pulled pork and sautéed mushrooms was another dish that displayed Marchand’s special talent for exalting comfort food dishes with some haute-cuisine technique. Similarly, cured Banka trout with beurre blanc tosazu (Japanese rice vinegar with dashi), celery and lime was light and refreshing but deeply satisfying. And the dessert not to miss is the chocolate ganache made with chocolate from Monsieur Txokola, a bean-to-bar artisan chocolate producer in Bayonne and Biarritz, with Basque gin and juniper berries.

Frenchie Biarritz also has an outstanding wine list, including many natural wines, and a fine selection of wines from both the French and Spanish Basque Country, with a brilliant choice of white Irouléguy from Domaine Ameztia and Domaine Arretxea in France and Bardea Bassoa 2020, a lush red from Spain. If you fancy a drink after dinner, sample one of the excellent eaux-de-vie made by Domaine Brana maybe pear or raspberry as the perfect sip after dinner. The restaurant is just as stylish and festive as the 1907 hotel on a cliff-top overlooking the sea in which it’s located, so it makes sense to treat yourself to a night at this lovely hotel too.

Frenchie Biarritz at the Hotel Regina Experimental Biarritz,

52 Avenue de l’Imperatrice, Biarritz, Tel. 33 05 59 41 33 00;

From France Today Magazine