“Amazing lightness, well-balanced hot-cold, low sugar levels, everything is designed to return” to the Spelt chocolate mousse

IThere are moments in a restaurant when the noise of conversations and clinking plates fades away, like an inner fade to black with the first bite. At Spelt, the warm chocolate mousse served on the lunch menu is one of those moments. We did indeed close our eyes several times, let out a “ah! yeah, anyway”, lost the thread of the discussion. Halfway between the mousse and the soufflé, we start the bowl with the quenelle of homemade chocolate sorbet to better break the thin crust and dive into the full heart of the dessert.

Surprising lightness, well-balanced hot-cold, low sugar levels, everything is designed to keep you coming back. However, the creator of this spell conjures us, there is nothing rocket science in all this: egg yolks whipped in a mixer then mixed with melted butter and 66% Valrhona dark chocolate and finally put in the oven at 200°C at the time of sending. That’s all ? The sorbet at the end, of course, but yes, that’s all.

The pastry chef, Marion Luque-Bouvier, cut her teeth at Le Meurice with Nina Métayer (elected best pastry chef in 2023), then she refined her chocolate devilry at 110 de Taillevent in London, with Raphaël Grima, her lifelong companion like at work. Both experienced a more flexible and more human management there, far from the martial palace brigades of which they had had a good meal.

Looks like a troglodyte refuge

Quite logically, they want a place of their own. They bought the lease of a traditional restaurant in the medieval town of Tourrettes-sur-Loup to perch, at the end of 2019, on the heights of the Vence region. The installation is not without difficulty due to the Covid-19 pandemic and confinement. The couple remembers preparing a multitude of beef Wellingtons ready to be put in the oven for customers coming from around thirty kilometers around. Word of mouth was their best publicity.

We enter the restaurant as if we were cooling down, Spelt takes on the air of a troglodyte refuge with its ground floor made entirely of stone and its narrow staircase leading to two bright rooms. At lunchtime, the offer is bistro and the prices match. Raphaël Grima sends out precisely cooked fish, the skin of which he browns instantly. In the evening, it’s time for the tasting dinner where we choose a turbot covered with thin slices of zucchini shiny like scales.

The adventure of Spelt is also that of a town and its artisans of taste, starting with Eric Laurent, the providential grocer capable of finding Kampot pepper as well as a Touraine miso paste, but also Lydie Monini, market gardener from whom the two chefs obtain their supplies every Wednesday in the market square. The bowls in which Raphaël serves his einkorn risotto (spelt, in English) with lobster are made by the Dubosq & fils workshop, flanked by their restaurant: “We didn’t want to show up with our big clogs and claim that we already knew how to do everything,” specifies Marion Luque-Bouvier.

From spring to summer, the upstairs terrace is open and popular with its view of the different valleys surrounding the town, the gateway to the French Alps. Here, even clinging to your spoon, there is no question of closing your eyes.