La Serre Bistro & Boulangerie

From the line to the pass

The proportion comes first for Anne-Laure Morisset Dutel, Chef at La Serre Bistro & Boulangerie in Dubai, where she carries the pass from a kitchen she learned station by station. She trained at Hotel School Yvon Bourges, then entered La Serre as chef de partie from 2018, moved into the sous chef role until 2020, and became head chef in 2020. That path matters here because the restaurant is not a place she inherited from a distance. She knows its pace from the line, its service pressure from the middle of the brigade, and its standards from the point where plates leave the pass. Her own sentence is plain: “I believe in the right balance of ingredients.” At La Serre, that reads less like a motto than a working method. Le Fameux Pain Perdu, the dish tied to her name, depends on proportion rather than ornament, the kind of plate that has to hold in a room moving from breakfast through dinner without changing its center of gravity.

A boulangerie folded into the bistro

The program at La Serre is built around the French bistro and the boulangerie sharing one address, so the day begins with the bench before the room takes on its evening register. Croissants, pains au chocolat, baguettes and pastries anchor the morning work; tarte flambé, Dover Sole, crepes, shakshouka and fruit plates sit within the broader à la carte rhythm. The method stays traditional rather than theatrical. Dough, butter, heat and timing do the visible labor in the boulangerie, while the bistro side asks for consistency through repeated service. La Serre’s kitchen has also had to hold its identity through the venue’s Dubai evolution, from the earlier boulevard association into the City Walk C2 Licensed District, without losing the Parisian line it is built on. The house carries a curated wine program and a full bar, but the food remains the measure: breakfast classics by day, French comfort at night, with the pastry counter setting the tone before the first lunch plates are called.

The room around the work

The room gives the cooking a particular kind of pressure. Floor-to-ceiling windows bring daylight across rustic wood and wrought-iron details, while greenery softens the edges of a dining room that can feel radiant without becoming loud. The counter and the pass have to serve different appetites in the same frame: a morning pastry taken with coffee, a plate of Dover Sole, a table lingering under softer terrace light. Nothing can hide behind volume. In that atmosphere, Anne-Laure Morisset Dutel’s continuity inside the kitchen has weight; the gesture is not reinvention, but keeping balance through every plate of Le Fameux Pain Perdu.