Le VIII has opened inside the former vaulted cellar of Château la Commaraine in Pommard, with three tasting menus priced at €180, €195 and €230.
It sits inside a restored 37-room hotel with a spa and a working winery, all of it within the 3.63-hectare Clos de la Commaraine, a Pommard Premier Cru monopole.
The name comes from the eight subplots a soil study identified inside the Clos de la Commaraine. One menu is built on that division, and so is the restaurant’s wider argument about connecting food to the way the vineyard is actually farmed.
The three menus are not simply short, medium and long
Nature runs eight sequences at €180, with a €120 pairing. Plant-led, built around land, seasons and growers.
Parcellaires also runs eight, organised around the eight subplots of the clos. €195, same €120 pairing.
Expression is the long one. Ten courses, served to the whole table, €230, with a full pairing at €160.
Which means appetite is not the deciding factor. Nature and Parcellaires carry the same number of sequences and make completely different arguments: one starts in the plant world, the other sets out to translate a vineyard’s parcel structure into dinner.
An à la carte selection is also available and changes according to season and supply.
The cellar gives the restaurant a physical link to the estate
Le VIII occupies the vaulted space beneath the château. Bare stone, and an open kitchen in front of the room.
A different proposition from a hotel dining room with photographs of vines on the wall. The Clos de la Commaraine and the working winery are on the same property, a few steps away.
Vineyard language comes easily in Burgundy, where every plate can be described through terroir, parcel and season. Naming the restaurant after the vineyard’s internal divisions sets a higher bar than most kitchens choose to set themselves.
Parcellaires is where that gets tested. Course by course, subplot by subplot.
Christophe Raoux defines the vision, Jérôme Rioux runs the kitchen
The culinary direction was developed by Christophe Raoux, a Meilleur Ouvrier de France who also leads Le Royal at Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa. Daily execution at Le VIII is overseen by Jérôme Rioux.
Le Royal holds a Michelin star. Le VIII does not, and a star does not travel with a chef between restaurants.
Worth saying plainly in an opening month. Le VIII has its own team in Pommard, its own room and its own service, and the guides will judge it on those.
Rémi Guérin runs the desserts. Chocolate with rock samphire and lemon. Rhubarb with shiso and yoghurt. Strawberries with candied chilli and smoke.
The product list moves beyond Burgundy
On the savoury side: tomatoes, Beauce onions, summer mushrooms, Charolais beef, Breton lobster, line-caught turbot.
Not a menu confined to what grows within sight of the room, then. The estate supplies the organising principle; the seafood and the specialist products come from elsewhere in France.
Which is the honest position. Burgundy supplies the wine, the vegetables, the agricultural context and the cultural frame. Brittany supplies the lobster.
The wine list starts with the estate but does not stop there
Sommelier Victor Petitot has built the list around Burgundy, with Clos de la Commaraine and the other Domaine de la Commaraine Premier Crus at its centre, then extended it outwards through the neighbouring regions, the less obvious French terroirs, the New World and Champagne.
Domaine de la Commaraine has earned its place at the front of that list, especially for a guest who walked the clos that afternoon. The rest of the list keeps the evening from becoming a single-producer tasting.
It gives Petitot room to answer the food and the table in front of him.
For a collector, Petitot is worth an early conversation: vintage, parcel, storage, availability, and why a particular bottle belongs with a particular course. Rare labels are the easy part.
Outside guests can reserve without staying at the chateau
Non-residents can book, subject to availability. Tuesday to Saturday, arrival between 7pm and 9pm.
Smart casual, no sportswear, no children under seven.
Le VIII will take dietary preferences, allergies and intolerances when they are disclosed at booking, without promising that every one of the three menus can be rebuilt around them.
All of which makes Le VIII a planned Burgundy dinner rather than an improvised stop between tastings.
The hotel gives the meal a longer context
Thirty-seven rooms and suites, a spa, two restaurants, gardens, a working winery. Château la Commaraine reopened after a five-year restoration that kept the historic stone and timber and put contemporary interiors inside them.
Pommard is ten minutes from Beaune, 45 from Dijon. The hotel arranges private transfers, and winery visits depend on the season and on what is happening in the vineyard that week.
Sleeping on the estate changes the rhythm of the evening entirely. You taste the wines where they are made, walk back to the room, and have Le Clos for the more relaxed meal the following night.
Non-residents should sort the transport first. A €160 pairing and a drive through the Côte de Beaune do not belong in the same evening.
What remains to be established
Menu, prices, team and schedule are all public. Consistency is the one thing only a season of service can show.
The opening season should establish:
- how clearly Parcellaires communicates the eight vineyard plots;
- whether the plant-led Nature menu feels complete rather than corrective;
- how the open kitchen affects noise and atmosphere;
- whether the estate wines dominate or strengthen the wider list;
- how service balances technical explanation with the pace of dinner;
- how frequently the à la carte selection changes.
Luxury.it perspective
Le VIII has something no city dining room can reproduce: a working Premier Cru monopole outside the door.
An asset like that raises the standard rather than meeting it. The references have to stay precise enough to survive past the name on the menu, which is exactly the discipline eight named subplots impose on a kitchen.
The cellar, the clos and the wine set the scene. Dinner is what brings people back.
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L’Herbier Secret at Hôtel de Crillon · Anne-Sophie Pic in Paris · Restaurants
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