L’Assiette Champenoise

The Restaurant

L'Assiette Champenoise holds three Michelin stars — one of only twenty-nine restaurants in France at the highest level — under chef Arnaud Lallement, who inherited the kitchen from his father Jean-Pierre in 2005 and earned the third star in 2014. The restaurant occupies a handsome Art Nouveau property in Tinqueux, a five-minute drive west of central Reims, surrounded by mature park grounds that also house the twenty-six-room Relais & Châteaux hotel that operates alongside the restaurant.

The cooking is classical French of the highest order. The signature dish — the homard bleu 'hommage à mon père' (blue lobster with its own coral bisque) — is a direct inheritance from Jean-Pierre Lallement's original menu and has been served continuously for four decades. The tasting menus run €260 for six courses, €350 for nine, €450 with the Champagne pairing (which is what the restaurant is famous for and what most guests choose). The dining room seats approximately fifty across the main room and the winter garden; the garden room is the more intimate of the two.

The wine cellar contains approximately 40,000 bottles, with particular depth — obviously — in Champagne, including grower-producers and vintage blends unavailable anywhere else. The sommelier team is widely considered among the most knowledgeable in the region, and the house maintains personal relationships with every major Champagne maison. For a serious tasting of Champagne at the highest level, L'Assiette Champenoise is the single most important restaurant in the region.