L’Apogée Courchevel — Hotel in Albertville

I had dinner at Giovanni in L’Apogée Hotel last night, and the experience was a bit of a contradiction. First off, the restaurant doesn’t even exist on Google Maps, which is strange for a place that clearly aims to be high-end.

Now, credit where it’s due—the service was excellent, and the staff were genuinely kind and attentive. However, for a place that’s this premium, this expensive, and this luxurious, the food was shockingly disappointing. You’d think that if you’re going to charge top-tier prices, you’d at least get the fundamentals of Italian cuisine right. • The sauces? Lacked depth. They felt flat, almost like an afterthought. • The pasta? Overcooked, completely missing the al dente texture. Definitely not what you’d expect at this level. • The steak? Ordered medium, got rare. A fundamental mistake that shouldn’t happen in a restaurant of this caliber. • The pizza? It was actually a Margherita, but somehow, they managed to make it taste like an American-style cheese overload. You could barely see the sauce. How do you even get a Margherita wrong? • And then there’s the Parmesan shreds—on everything. It felt like they were trying to compensate for the lack of flavor by throwing cheese on every dish, which is far from authentic Italian cooking.

Now, just to put things into perspective—I paid 560 euros for this dinner. If someone offered me the exact same food for 20 euros, I still wouldn’t pay for it.

The setting and service deserve praise, but unless the kitchen seriously improves, this place is all flash with...

Now I understand what the "Palace" rating is in France! L'Apogee was a Palace and among the best hotels we have ever stayed in. The rooms were exquisite, high quality in every respect. We had a junior suite and it was large with well appointed furniture and bedding. At night, they would leave a gift for us on the bed (from puffy under-jackets to ski sox and head gear). All of the supplies in the bar/fridge are complimentary. The location was super, ski in/ski out with your ski's ready to go outside with your room # post next to them. Though it was a 5 min ride to town, they had complimentary shuttles to or you can take the short gondola ride down. On top of this, the hotel staff were exceptional, made you feel at home and so welcome! Everyone know our name (we stayed for 7 nights) and were always helping to make dinner reservations or put our ski boots on or take them off after a day of skiing with a glass of wine or hot coffee or cocoa. At first it was embarrassing but then my wife and I got used to it. Only improvement area would be to make the lunches more varied and reasonably priced. We understand it's a luxury hotel at $3-$4k/night but don't need to charge $65 Euros for a burger. If you like luxury and want to be pampered, there are few better hotels to stay at, not only in Courchevel but anywhere...

As a person living in London I was utterly shocked by the price of our dinner. I love a gourmet restaurant as much as the next person but €500.00+ for a mediocre meal for 3 is just ridiculous. Also, it is a well-known fact that in such a type of restaurant the courses should be at least 30min apart, the waitress failed to observe this rule despite us expressly telling her we dont like to cram our food down our gullets at break-neck speed. ||||Lastly, the sweet potato fries though good were bloody €60.00, I dare you to show me a restaurant that equals this in ridicule. Not to mention the chateaubrian was clearly well-done and nothing like it should be which is absolutely silly as a prime requirement for it is that it is at the very least medium rare.||||Food was obviously not generally bad (expect the ones mentioned) but given how overpriced it was it rendered the whole experience...