It’s not often you find perfectly authentic Ligurian Focaccia di Recco on a French beach, but La Brigantine has mastered Italian cuisine. La Brigantine sits down on the beach at Gigaro, part of the beach club belonging to Lily of the Valley, twenty minutes from Saint-Tropez and a world away from it. You come for the terrace at the water’s edge, and then you read the menu and feel like you’ve been transported to Italy.
La Brigantine is a proper Italian restaurant, not a French kitchen doing a summer pasta special. The menu runs the length of the country, Milan down to Sicily, and the kitchen is headed by people who clearly know the difference between the two.
Start with the focaccia di Recco, the thin Ligurian delicacy stuffed with cheese, which comes out blistered and molten and disappears faster than anything else on the table. The octopus salad is the other opener we would order again, with potatoes, olives, tomatoes and a chickpea purée underneath, which seemed simultaneously hearty and healthy.
Then the pasta, where the kitchen really shows itself. We ordered the three that sounded best and were right about all of them. Spaghetti with sea urchin, ravioli filled with baccalà with tomatoes and olives, and a Genovese that was the best we have had outside Napoli, including our own. Anyone who has stood over a pan of onions for that long will know what an compliment that is. The sea urchin is the other dish you will not find along this stretch, so order it while it is on. Our son chose it and ate the lot.
The wine list is long and full of well-known Italian names, but we were in France, so we drank French. We chose the Château Sainte Marguerite, from La Londe-les-Maures just along the coast, a house favourite of ours that holds up against food this rich better than most Provence rosé does.
Two things to know before you go: First, the hotel itself is up on the hillside, while the restaurant and beach club are down at sea level, directly on the water, which catches people out when they book. Second, this is a dress code place, requiring elegant casual, and they mean it. Do not turn up to dinner in a swimsuit and a cover-up straight off the sand.
Note: Lily of the Valley provided support for the reporting of this story.