1920

1920 — the gastronomic restaurant of the Four Seasons Hotel Megève, opened on the Rothschild family's Mont d'Arbois plateau — holds two Michelin stars under Julien Gatillon. The room is the year the family chalet was built, the property is the result of a hundred-year Edmond de Rothschild project to create the most discreet luxury resort in the French Alps, and the wine cellar is the deepest Bordeaux reference list in any French Alpine restaurant.

Gatillon trained under Yannick Alléno at the Plaza Athénée and moved to Megève in 2014 to take this kitchen. His cooking is contemporary-French, lighter than Alléno's, and built around the alpine-meets-coastal Provence axis that the Rothschild family larder allows — Mediterranean langoustines and Bresse pigeon arrive alongside fera from Lake Annecy and Beaufort cheese from the herders below. The two-star menu runs five, seven and nine courses; signatures include a smoked fera with Granny Smith and finger lime, an artichoke barigoule with black truffle, and a Tonka-bean soufflé that the pastry team has been refining since 2015.

The wine programme is the differentiator. Sommelier Diane Dauthieu runs a 1,800-bin list with verticals of Château Lafite-Rothschild going back to 1959 (the family connection is meaningful — these are not auction acquisitions). The pairing menu at €170 is heavily Burgundian; for two-bottle dinners, the upper-tier Bordeaux are quietly the best-priced in the resort.

Service is Four Seasons-grade — the captain's pacing is exact, the bread is rotated on a timer, the sommelier suggests a digestif before being asked. The dining room itself is wood-panelled with a low fire and a wall of glass facing south to the Aravis range. The terrace opens for summer dinners with a Mont Blanc view that no other two-star room in the region matches. This is the most polished fine dining in Megève.

1920 is the impress-the-client room when polish is the brief. The Four Seasons name does the warm-up; Gatillon's two stars settle the cooking; the wine list — particularly the family-connection Lafite vertical — closes the deal. Book the corner table by the south-facing window for a Mont Blanc dinner view; ask the sommelier for the Lafite-by-the-glass programme that the hotel runs quietly for serious wine clients.