Hôtel Restaurant Le Fiacre à Quend plage

Few chefs show such a strong culinary personality as Alexandre Gauthier in La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil. The story unfolds in a space with two tiered metal rooftops (designed by architect Patrick Bouchain) and views onto the verdant surroundings and the kitchens. This is the laboratory in which the chef cooks up "contemporary cuisine with French roots, liberated from its certainties and preconceptions". Like an alchemist, he teases out flavours in on-point dishes, each a vignette of creativity in which the ingredients sing the praises of the seasons. Artistic and experimental cuisine, to be sav

In a small regional-style building near the docks, this young couple beautifully showcases local ingredients. Example dishes include pressed sea bass with sand carrots, chervil sorbet; fillet of hake, beurre blanc with sea aster, mashed sandy potatoes; baba with a citrus syrup, cream with lemon balm… Tasty and expertly executed cuisine!

The top floor of this entirely revamped 18C salt barn is home to a fashionable, stripped-back restaurant decked in raw materials that commands a panoramic view over the Somme Bay. According to the dictionary, a schorre (or a salt marsh) refers to an “upper coastal intertidal zone of thick mud, covered by grass and regularly flooded by high tides”. Chef François-Xavier Sailly regularly renews his creative gourmet score with unexpected combinations.

This peaceful inn between Le Touquet and Montreuil-sur-Mer exudes a smart rural vibe. The chef painstakingly selects the ingredients with which to carefully craft flavoursome traditional fare. House specialities include lobster salad, pigeon cooked two ways and Grand Marnier soufflé. Everything is prepared in house, including the bread and ice cream!

In the words of Anecdote's owner Alexandre Gauthier, who is also chef at La Grenouillère, Samuel Pesquet creates a "cuisine of memory" – in it, he pays homage to the dishes his father used to make in the 1980s. This is generous and mouth-watering cuisine made from fine ingredients – goujonnettes with gribiche sauce, braised rib steak, crêpes Suzette or tarte Tatin – that you won't be forgetting any time soon.