Les Barmes de l'Ours

Les Barmes is Val d'Isère's Relais & Châteaux house, planted at the foot of the Face de Bellevarde, the Critérium de la Première Neige piste, which you watch from the rooms. Forty-nine rooms and twenty-seven suites, a contemporary art gallery, a bowling alley, and above all the resort's only MICHELIN star: La Table de l'Ours, from chef Antoine Gras, whose room is a timber roof structure set on columns of stone quarried in the valley. Two further tables complete it, La Rôtisserie and Le Coin Savoyard, all three under the same brigade. The Sisley spa runs to a thousand square metres and extends to a hair salon. The house does not chase the shop window, which makes it our first recommendation for a stay of several weeks.