Michel Kayser - Restaurant Alexandre

Between Nîmes and Arles, in grounds planted with hundred-year-old cedars, Michel Kayser does what he does best: cooking from the heart to enhance the ingredients, while harnessing his technical skills in a bid to stir the emotions of good food lovers. There are few chefs who celebrate the Mediterranean with such precision, aplomb or enthusiasm: red mullet grilled under a salamander, ravioles of French olives (picholines), jus of roasted fish bones; breast of squab from Costière cooked on the bone, stuffed leg and crunchy offal, gutsy jus of smoked paprika. All the side dishes and other edible delicacies (like the bread made with red mullet scales – just the ticket to unashamedly mop up the big-boned jus in the fashion of a bouillabaisse rouille) are exclusively designed to underscore and enhance the main ingredient (which is used from top to tail, like the rabbit terrine). Utterly free of gadgets and gimmicks, everything tastes of something in this establishment devoted to flavour.