On paper, Mirazur is set up to be a highly memorable meal with its location outside Monaco overlooking the coast and its Michelin two-star standing and well regarded chef but it ended up being a meal that just fell short of being really good. Perhaps it was because it was lunch and the sun’s rays through Mirazur’s full length windows made the restaurant a tad too warm to be comfortable. But it may also be that we already had a fantastic meal at the Chèvre d’Or in Eze with a stunning view, so the “wow” factor was gone at Mirazur. So perhaps I should give Mirazur a second try. However, with all the good food in the region, I wouldn’t put Mirazur on the top of my list of recommendations but if in the Menton area, it’s worth going there.
One of the things that ended up bugging me a bit was that the wooden chicken that they used as part of their petit-fours display at the end of the meal was actually broken in one leg and it surprised me that a restaurant of this standing would still use such a carving. Perhaps I’m picky but I felt it cheapened the experience. I really did want to like Mirazur because much of the food is a lighter version of french food – aka modern french, which I generally prefer, so it is disappointing that I can’t in the end recall which dish I actually liked best. So while the food was still good, it was not exactly memorable.
Chef Mauro Colagreco is one of the few foreign chefs (he’s Argentinian) with more than one Michelin star in France. Having trained with the current greats of french cooking such as Alain Ducasse, he opened Mirazur in 2006. My experience with the restaurant started out well as they were very responsive to my emailed request for a booking and offered a choice of three menus for our group of eight. They also accommodated our time concerns as one couple had a plane to catch. Collectively, we opted for a six-course lunch priced at EUR85, which I thought was decent value for our meal. We started with some tasty canapés and a foie gras terrine.
The foie gras (main headline picture above) had a seam with a sourish taste that I believe was made of from dates and a Menton lemon paste. I thought this was a nice way to serve the foie gras. This was followed by a refreshing lobster with harlequin tomato. The lobster was just nicely cooked and served in a light tomato broth.
A sea bass came next, cooked in line with the light Mediterranean flavours of our meal thus far with the fish served with mussels in a saffron broth reminding me a bit of traditional french bouillabaisse, which I really like. The final meat dish of our meal was essentially Mirazur’s modernised version of a duck a l’orange. Our breast of challans duck was accompanied by a lemon sauce and carrots. The lemon sauce was good, no doubt given that Menton is famous for its lemons.
We ended our meal with Mirazur’s interpretation of Peach Melba. This was a refreshing dessert on a warm Autumn day but somewhat underwhelming. More interesting was the dark chocolate that was made to look like twigs set among real leaves.
On the whole, and on hindsight, I think the quality of the ingredients made it a good meal. There was nothing to fault with the cooking as well. It’s probably because our expectations were higher that this lunch seemed to underwhelm us. While the taste of the dishes were good, the creativity or complexity relative to others seemed to fall short. I probably would have derived the same enjoyment at a brasserie with a good bouillabaisse, duck and foie gras terrine. On like-for-like, I much prefer our overall experience at Chèvre d’Or in Eze.
Mirazur’s website: http://www.mirazur.fr. Online booking is available.