PortraitChefs Arnaud Lallement, at L’Assiette Champenoise, and Philippe Mille, at Crayères, have become emblems of local gastronomy.
While Reims has no shortage of historical monuments, L’Assiette Champenoise and Domaine Les Crayères deserve to be classified by a gastronomic heritage commission, as these hotel-restaurants have for years symbolized the luxury and refinement of the city of coronations. Dominated by its “Mountain” of vines, the unofficial capital of champagne can boast of having two of the most beautiful embassies of regional wine genius. With two quadras as chefs, born the same year, in 1974: Arnaud Lallement (L’Assiette champenoise, three stars since 2014) and Philippe Mille (Le Parc, Domaine Les Crayères, two stars since 2012).
Crowned this fall “Best Champagne Card in the World” by the British magazine The World of Fine Wine, Les Crayères presents, on a special menu, nearly 850 references; 580 vintages from great houses and 270 from winegrowers. With the help of his young head sommelier, Martin Jean, chef Philippe Mille magnifies these treasures with food and wine pairings. But also in preparations whose sparkling pleasure seeks to play with the identity of the three grape varieties of the region: chardonnay (invigorating, for example, a sauce with cuttlefish or artichokes), pinot noir (lacquering a soft-boiled egg or spicy meat juice) and pinot meunier (in fine jelly or simmered, sometimes with Jerusalem artichokes).
In Tinqueux, a town in the inner western suburbs of Reims, L’Assiette champenoise rivals this effervescent profusion. Under the aegis of sommelier Frédéric Boucher (more than thirty years in the house), the 1,000 or so labels referenced are leaving more and more room for champagnes from winegrowers, some of whom – Frédéric Savart, Delphine Boulard, Jérôme Prévost or Alexandre Chartogne – are friends of Arnaud Lallement. A chef delighted to explain that his cuisine “Is thought to go with champagne”.
Competition beast
In the east of Reims, Les Crayères opened this royal road in the early 1980s, when Xavier Gardinier, then owner of the Lanson and Pommery champagnes, had the idea of transforming the imposing building of the Polignacs, former owners of Pommery. On the Butte Saint-Nicaise, whose chalk quarries were converted into gigantic cellars by the large houses (Cliquot, Vranken-Pommery, Ruinart, Taittinger …), this small castle has been deploying its neoclassical luxury since 1904 overlooking an English park of 7 hectares.
After having dominated the Reims culinary scene for nearly twenty years thanks to Gérard Boyer, the iconic triple star of the place from 1983 to 2003, Les Crayères – still managed by the Gardinier group, also owner of two Parisian institutions, Taillevent and Drouant – experienced a period of instability before the arrival, in 2009, of Philippe Mille. A Sarthois, beast of competition, who, in 2011, obtained at the same time his first star and the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France. “When I arrived, I didn’t know anything about champagne”, admits the chef with the blue-white-red collar.
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