Opening Shot is a column that peeks inside new hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops with dreamy interiors.
BLUE BAY MARCEL RAVIN
Designer: Alexandra Saguet, AS Interior Design
Location: Monte-Carlo, Monaco
On Offer: Monaco has no fewer than six Michelin-starred restaurants to its .81 square-miles of land, and Marcel Ravin’s Blue Bay is easily among the most inventive of them. While the French-trained chef by way of Martinique deftly executes all manner of courses—his approach to vegetables, for example, is famously inspired by memories of harvests from his grandmother’s garden—his restaurant’s proximity to the French Riviera’s turquoise glow feels like a poetic indication of his most powerful muse and greatest strength: seafood. As Ravin tells it, it was by preparing a multi-course feast for designer Alexandra Saguet that he articulated his vision for their collaboration on Blue Bay. “There is old Caribbean and there is modern,” Ravin says, and his is undoubtedly the latter. Influences from Japanese, Monegasque, West Indian, and Piedmontese culinary traditions collide on his tasting menu.
Standout Features: As in cuisine, there’s also a dichotomy of old-school fine dining interiors and contemporary. Saguet’s teems with sleek odes to Ravin’s oceanic muses. As Ravin tells it, the palette evokes “the white of sea urchin, black mangroves of the Caribbean Sea, [teal] water of Martinique and Montpellier and the fishing nets of Martinique.” Artisan-made wares, like the show stopping Lotus bowl by Caro Gates and Poterie de la Madeleine’s Vase d’Anduze, complement the bespoke armchairs, chef’s table, and pendant lights made by Saguet’s studio. The real star of the show, though, are the ceramic table settings custom made by Martinique-born, Paris-based artisan Peggy Desmeules, with whom Ravin worked for more than a year to nail their evocations of the Caribbean Sea.
