La Merise

The station held in service

The sauce work asks for patience before the pass begins. Cédric Deckert is the executive chef and co-owner of La Merise in Laubach, which he runs with Christelle Deckert, and the kitchen he leads is built for a formal tasting menu where each plate has to leave with its heat, gloss and proportion intact. His stated philosophy is pure and direct cooking, described through the idea of simplexity: exceptional technique that recedes so that taste and pleasure hold the foreground.

In practice that means reinterpreting classical recipes with a twist rather than discarding them, using high-quality seasonal ingredients lifted by subtle, carefully built jus and sauces. Reviews return to the same qualities: precision of cooking, impeccable technique, and balance of flavour. The restaurant’s rapid ascent measures the same thing from outside, with a first Michelin star in 2018 and a second in 2021, and a young team behind the pass carrying the standard through service.

Jus, herbs and the long tasting line

The program at La Merise is modern French fine dining with a tasting-menu rhythm, held inside a house that opened in October 2016. The kitchen’s language is built around seasonal products, clear flavors and sauces that carry the plate rather than cover it. Dishes associated with the house include red mullet with Madras curry and coconut soup, roast pigeon breast with ginger jus, and blue Breton lobster with preserved tomatoes in balsamic vinaigrette. The pleasure is in the calibration: spice held to freshness, acidity used as a cut, jus reduced until it gives body without heaviness.

The site gives the kitchen its own small register of materials. A herb garden sits near the restaurant, with a flower meadow and six beehives producing flower honey, so the grounds are not merely scenery beyond the glass. They enter the thinking of the place. Before the main sequence, guests have encountered small starters such as a blackcurrant foie gras macaron, gewurz marc candy and blackberry caviar. The cellar supports that pacing with more than 5000 bottles, and the contemporary wine room is part of the same property. La Merise does not treat the glass as decoration; the pour has to meet the sauce.

A half-timbered room at the edge of the fields

The room carries Alsace in material rather than costume. The building was made with oak half-timbering, Biberschwanz tiles and Vosges sandstone, using reclaimed old materials so that the house sits naturally in Laubach, near the edge of the Vosges du Nord nature park and a short drive from Strasbourg. Large windows look toward countryside, orchards and hills. Inside, the tone is sober and warm, with subtle light and an intimacy suited to a quiet service. Nothing in the room asks to outrun the plate.

The property covers 600m², with two dining rooms, a seminar room and the cellar, but the scale still feels held close by the rural setting. That matters to the pass. A tasting menu here unfolds without the pressure of a city dining room pressing against the windows; the room gives the hands time to work, and gives the guest enough stillness to notice the ginger jus, the honeyed note, the Vosges sandstone.