L'Essentiel is a very serious restaurant located in a glass pyramid opposite the station in this attractive town, best known as a winter sports centre. Inside the glass pyramid is a comfortable restaurant with well spaced tables and pleasant armchairs to relax in. The restaurant oozes seriousness with displays of freshly baked breads, a massive cheese board and plenty of polished glassed and under stated but elegant show plates.

The top menu dégustation is not for the non serious eater in that it is priced at Euros 82. The only slight catch is that all persons at the table must have this menu, and whilst at first sight that may seem unreasonable, having had the menu I can understand why: it would be impossible to pace other dishes around this many courses.

We started with two off the menu items. The amuse bouche was a kind of wild mushroom tart with plenty of diced and sautéed mushrooms on delicate flaky pastry. Then, as we expected the first course, a taster course arrives. This was four items on a wooden plank. In our case it was a very light smoked salmon mouse, a tiny portion of mussel soup, foie grass mouse and a little smoked duck on a pastry stick.

The first real course was pan fried Goose liver on toast, with a slice of fresh fig and essence of beef. The goose liver fell apart and was suitably pink.

Next a smiling lobster's head supported by its tail on a bed of tomato confit which was cleverly both solid, as in slice, and soft, as soft fruit. Of course the lobster was delicious and the whole presentation was almost too good to spoil!

The red mullet fillet came with seared tuna and a mushroom tart: again a great presentation with loads of different flavours and consistencies.

I must admit I am not a great fan of the dreaded sorbet course, it may clear the palate but I always thought that was what wine was for! Anyway we now had an interesting lemon sorbet with basil.

I am not sure which the main course would be in a menu such as this? I suppose there is not one! However the final meat course was pigeon with foie gras, well that was the description. In reality it was the barely cooked pigeon breast in small pastry cornets. There were three flutes and one included foie gras. There was also a pigeon leg to suck on. For me this was great dish as I like game and enjoy pigeon. This was certainly the most imaginative way that I have had it. And at the end of a large meal this was light enough to please, but not be too much.

The comment about too much suddenly became very relative as there were two courses left. The cheese board looked great, but at this stage none of us really fancied doing it justice. However just when you thought the chef must have run out of ideas and we were thinking a light pud might just be fit in: somewhere: the pud arrived. Or maybe it would be better described as the table suddenly got covered in different puddings. The basket of gooey meringue biscuits looked good, but that was before another plank of goodies arrived. This included a chocolate soufflé, an apple tart, kiwi fruit mousse and fresh strawberries. Then as we finished this two more courses arrived in the form of pannacotta with blackberries and a really superb Chartreuse ice cream: doused with chartreuse. By the time we had finished we knew we had not only had a brilliant meal but we also felt a bit like one of those geese must feel just before it's liver is removed!

We stuck to mainly to the local wines and they were adequate rather than memorable. I suppose with this type of meal one should have dived into the wine list and had some of the superb wines on offer. But this time I was more than happy to let the food do the talking; and what it had to say was more than enough!

This was definitely the best meal of our trip. Not only was the food superb but it was well paced. It took just about four hours to consume. The service was generally good with great deal of theatre going into the presentation. The food was placed in front of us, and then a waiter appeared to say exactly what was what. Early on there was competition amongst the waiters and manager as to who should say what and when. That was slightly irritating, but later on, as the restaurant filled up we almost ran out of waiting staff. Maybe a prima donna too many we thought! But that was the only niggle: hey you have to have one!

Well that was just about it: but as our plane was in the evening we needed a little lunch and stopped at Annecy where the La Taverne de Maître Kanter on the banks of the river as it runs into the lake provided with a simple lunch of Jambon persil and bye bye steak (Tartare). All very pleasant except we could have done with out the ketchup in the steak mix, but a little judicious adding and mixing of Worcestershire sauce etc. managed too rescue the dish. This was a simple meal and good finale to what had been a memorable trip.

A final note on La Taverne de Maître Kanter. They are a group of similar Alsatian style establishments owned by Kronenborg brewery. I have always found them to serve good food at fair price with good service. A safe place to stop for a quick lunch or even a longer meal, they are in many towns in France .