L'Essentiel

L'Essentiel is a Michelin-starred gastronomic restaurant in Périgueux offering modern, inventive cuisine. The house calls its dishes original in product choice and preparation, composing them daily from fresh-seasonal ingredients so each flavour is balanced and expressive. Magali and Éric run the restaurant in a contemporary warm-space; the kitchen pursues a careful-yet-generous style, offers four different formulas and refined, tasty dishes, the wine list totals some 200 approachable-balanced references, and a nearby holiday house, Le Clos des Izards, is available for rental to visiting guests. Contemporary, warm and intimate dining rooms with few tables and a patio create a welcoming, uncluttered, cosy and refined setting suited to quiet gastronomic meals. Modern French gastronomy guides an inventive, product-led kitchen whose menus change daily to showcase fresh-seasonal produce and that presents fixed-price formulas alongside tasting-style menus. Specialties include roasted duck foie-gras escalope with pistachio crumb; oysters in vegetable jelly with crab cream and langoustine tartare; snail ravioli with mild chili butter and mushroom gratin; half roasted pigeon with sweet potato variations; seared scallops with crispy pig's trotter and squash purée; melting dark chocolate tartlet with pear and almond-saffron ice cream; and warm passion fruit and Madagascar vanilla soufflé with Tonka bean.