Club 55

The Restaurant

In the summer of 1955, Roger Vadim arrived on Pampelonne Beach with a film crew, a young actress named Brigitte Bardot, and an appetite. Madame de Colmont, whose family had settled on this then-wild stretch of coastline years earlier, fed them. They came back the next day, and the day after that, and before anyone fully understood what was happening, the most famous beach club in the world had been born. Club 55 is now run by Patrice de Colmont, Madame de Colmont's grandson, who has extended the family philosophy — "ici le client n'est pas le roi, parce qu'il est un ami" (here the client is not the king, because he is a friend) — into an institution that manages to feel simultaneously unchanged and entirely of the present moment.

The setting is the argument: long wooden tables set beneath a canopy of bamboo and bougainvillea, inches from Pampelonne's white sand, the sea so close you can hear it between conversations. On a summer afternoon in July, 900 covers will turn over, and the clientele will include Russian oligarchs, Parisian intellectuals, American fashion editors, local fishermen, and the occasional person who has no idea how difficult it was to get this table. The genius of Club 55 is that it treats them all the same. This is not condescension; it is the highest form of hospitality. Everyone is a friend.

The menu has never pretended to be haute cuisine, and that restraint is its greatest achievement. A basket of crudités with anchovy dip. A tomato salad from nearby Ramatuelle with olive oil that costs more than you expect. The Pampelonne salad: lettuce, tuna, olives, egg, a dressing so simple it should not work and somehow always does. Ratatouille made from vegetables that actually taste of what they are. Grilled fish pulled from the Mediterranean that morning, dressed with nothing but lemon and good oil. The wine list centres on Provence rosé, specifically the Côtes de Provence designations you find nowhere outside the Var. This is correct. This is what you drink here, in this light, at this temperature.

Best Occasion Fit: Birthday

There is a particular kind of birthday lunch — the one for someone who has everything, who has been to every extraordinary restaurant, who is difficult to impress — where Club 55 is not just appropriate but correct. The mythology does the work the menu refuses to. You are sitting where Bardot sat. Onassis lunched here. Karl Lagerfeld had a regular table. The birthday person will understand what that means, or they will not, and if they do not, you should reconsider the friendship.

For a team dinner — particularly one celebrating something earned, a project completed, a quarter closed — Club 55 has the long-table energy that transforms colleagues into friends. The communal nature of the meal, the shared baskets of bread and crudités, the rosé arriving in magnums, the sound of the sea: it is the kind of evening people talk about for years. Book four months in advance for July or August. This is not a suggestion.

What to Order

Begin with the panier de crudités: raw vegetables served with a rouille and a vinaigrette that will make you question every salad dressing you have ever made at home. The artichoke with vinaigrette is essential in spring. For a main course, choose the catch of the day — grilled whole fish is the correct decision — or the ratatouille, which is the most honest version of the dish served anywhere on the Riviera. The Pampelonne rosé is the wine. There is no alternative. Order a magnum. You are on Pampelonne Beach in summer. You have no further decisions to make.