Les Trois Vallées may be known for its world-class skiing, but its culinary landscape is equally compelling. Across the three valleys, more than 200 restaurants, 150 bars, and countless cafés pepper the slopes and villages from cosy mountain huts serving hearty fondues to Michelin-starred tables showcasing the best of Savoyard produce. Every turn on the piste leads to a new flavour, a new local story, or a perfect après-ski wine.
Seeking Refuge from the Storm
Chez Pépé Nicolas is one such delicious find on the mountain and not easy to get to, but also not hard if you know where it is. A simple stone and timber building, it could be easy to ski right past if we weren’t given a local tip off as to its delicious menu with a focus on local-grown.
The alpine weather gods caught us off-guard with our lunch booking and turned the slopes leading down to Chez Pépé Nicolas into sheet ice. An easy opportunity to call and cancel our booking with chairlifts on windhold and Chez Pépé Nicolas’s outdoor terrace reservations all moved indoors immediately due to sudden inclement weather.
The Warmth of Savoyard Hospitality
Directed into the warmth of the restaurant’s interior, it was a different story to the howling winds outside and we dined on a delicious Plat De Jour, locally sourced pork and sweet potato with a simple but delicious salad and a Confit Lamb Parmentier with rosemary and roasted carrots, sweet potato puree and lamb jus. Our shared entree was truffled egg topped with cheese from the onsite farm, it melted in our mouths. Always, a little room for dessert we selected the Crumbled Cacao Mousse, served beautifully in a petit floral design with a shared Boule De Glace, homemade icecream.
From Pasture to Plate…
Chatting with Valentin, the Great-grandson of the restaurant’s founder, we soon discovered a great portion of the restaurant’s produce came directly from their farm and stores next door. After our delicious Crumble Cacao Mousse dessert, we followed Valentin out the back of Chez Pépé Nicolas to a small stone hut to the cheese store room. Inside wheels of cheeses lined the timber racks, which Valentin explains require regular turning to develop the delicious aged taste as the salt lining the outside gradually absorbs into the cheese itself.
Valentin explains their family farm, with 30 cows and 100 goats, agisted down in the valley until the summer months produce the delicious milk, yoghurt, ice creams and cheeses eaten just a few steps away from where we were chatting. On Thursday nights, Valentin hosts intimate dinners in the cheese room, guests (who can book online) are seated here among the very wheels that will later appear on their plates.
Freshness by Necessity
The stone hut next door to the cheese room hides something quite unexpected, a mountain-fed stream, clear and constantly flowing, where trout glide beneath a simple wooden plank as Valentin nimbly walks along to show us the lovely healthy trout, feeding mostly from nutrients in the alpine stream . They’re caught fresh, as needed for the restaurant, another reminder that here “Provenance isn’t a trend, it’s a necessity”.
Looking to the Future
Places like this offer something else entirely – perspective on this Alpine landsand Valentin is philosophical about it all, the changing seasons, the evolution of the region, the inevitable increased shift towards summer tourism. “It may not be now,” he says, “but in 100 years from now it will need to be.”
For now, though, winter remains and while the slopes of Les Trois Vallées deliver perfect corduroy, vast terrain, bluebird days in between moody days it’s just beyond the pistes, where the experience deepens.
Read also:
https://snowaction.com.au/val-thorens-ski-resort-guide-snow-apres-and-alpine-energy/
