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Barrière’s signature dishes

The Group gives chefs free rein to reinvent their cuisine. Here are a few traditional yet bold signature Barrière dishes.

Just the mere mention of the name Le Fouquet’s, and for many its famous tartare immediately springs to mind! After 20 years in the limelight, it was time to breathe new life into this classic Barrière dish. With no small amount of courage, three Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire set about the task and came up with a combination that is incredible and explosive in equal measure: hand-chopped beef tartare, smoked herring, red tuna, Beaufort cheese, all ingeniously washed down with a shot of tomato-red-current-vodka. A subtle combination that perfectly encapsulates Gagnaire’s identity as a chef, one that has worked with the Group for 4 years. That dish can be followed by the more familiar flavour of Fouquet’s traditional Napoleon, with its fine pastry layers that crunch deliciously in the mouth. Reinvented with a Kirsch and red berry mousse filling, this pastry continues to be an emblematic Barrière dish. Proudly displayed in the window on a desert trolley steeped in history, to this day it draws in passers-by and devotees alike.

 

Delicately reinvented escargots

 

A little more rustic but every bit as delicious, the Barrière croque monsieur is served in its casinos and hotels, when it isn’t making the odd detour via room service or to the beach. When it comes to a croque monsieur, nothing beats simplicity. Rustic bread coated in grated gruyere, a slice of quality ham, mustard, béchamel sauce. Only the finest ingredients for a croque-monsieur packed with personality, generosity and creaminess. Casino patrons in less of a hurry to get back to their Black Jack game can treat themselves to some time out in one of the Bistros Barrière, a new concept for casino dining. There, they can be surprised by a fresh twist on escargots served with ‘soldiers’. Taken out of their shells, these delightful gourmet snails are savoured in shortcrust pastry with garlic butter.

 

Celeriac, hay and gorgonzola

 

A different atmosphere now, with wood-roasted celeriac cooked by Mauro Colagreco, a Michelin-starred chef who owns his own gastronomic restaurant in Menton. He invented the “BFire” concept, B for Barrière, Fire for wood-fired cooking – a concept inspired by his Argentinian childhood, where fire expertly reveals the nuanced flavours of raw ingredients. Wood-burning stoves were installed in Cannes and Courchevel so smoked delicacies could be created and shared there in a warm, sociable atmosphere. That’s where Mauro Colagreco browns whole celeriac on a bed of hay, coated in gorgonzola and dusted with plenty of black truffle -  a nod to his Italian heritage.