Updated by: July 14, 2026
Over the Bridge
You cross a bridge to get to Noirmoutier. On the mainland side, the marshes and the bourrines, the old, thatched cottages built from mud and reeds. On the island side, white houses with blue doors and terracotta roofs. My 10-year-old daughter wore heels for the occasion. Everyone was in linen and floral dresses.
We were headed to the little port of L’Herbaudière, at the far end of the island, where one of the best restaurants in the country announces itself with a small brass nameplate, “La Marine.” The three Michelin stars are underneath, small as flowers, engraved on the doorbell. You ring to be let in.
Inside, before you eat, they take you to a separate room and show you a short film. Not about the restaurant. About the island. The salt flats, the fishermen, the tides. They want you to know where you are before you know what you’re eating.
Then the meal, and service is the wrong word for what happens. It’s a concert, and Céline Couillon conducts it. The kitchen is Alexandre’s playground, she says. The room is hers.
The best things here are the things you don’t expect. The film before the meal. The butter topped with local algae, the brioche too. A dessert, a marshmallow stick tinted with licorice, that looked like it shouldn’t exist. You come for the fish, which came out of the water you can see from the kitchen window, and you leave talking about everything around it.
And Alexandre never left the kitchen. He was too busy cooking, so we went to him. My wife was somewhere else entirely. She’d watched his episode of Chef’s Table so many times she shows it to her students, and now the man from the screen was standing at his own stove, posing for a selfie. She’d spent years watching Chef’s Table. Now she was standing at it.
The French don’t tip. Service is included; it’s just not done. I left one anyway. Some meals ask you to break the rules of the country you’re in.
Then you walk out past the doorbell with the stars on it, into the port, and it’s a fishing village again.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
