Rue des Jeux Olympiques, Savoie
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Every French child learns the fable by heart. A cicada sings all summer, and when the north wind comes she has nothing put by, so she begs a little grain from her neighbour, the ant. The ant, who has worked all summer, asks what the cicada did with hers. Singing, comes the answer. "Eh bien! dansez maintenant," says the ant, and shuts the door. In Méribel the story has a different ending, and Le Kaïla is where it happens.
Méribel is the ant of the Alps. Since 1938 the resort has lived by a building code drawn up by Peter Lindsay, a British officer in search of a valley for skiers no longer welcome in Austria. Every chalet must be built of wood, stone and slate under a double-pitched roof, and the valley grew up orderly, provident and quietly prosperous, a town of private chalets in no hurry to dress up. It took until 2012 for a family of hoteliers to give it a hotel of real ambition, and they built it like good ants: carved balconies, local stone, slate overhead, every rule obeyed.
Inside, the hotel has the ant's great virtue, which is having thought of everything before winter comes. Fires burn in the hearths, fur throws lie across the beds, wide windows frame the piste and the showers double as hammams. Suites unlock into one another until a family has a chalet's worth of rooms. A private lift climbs from the ski shop straight to the slopes, a green run brings skiers back to the door, and small children get a club and a room full of LEGO. Nothing is left to chance, and the owners keep a protective eye on all of it.
Then, every December, the cicada arrives. Laurent Azoulay grew up in the Gard and trained in Provence, where the cicada is practically the regional emblem, and instead of turning him away, the ant handed him the kitchen. At L'Ekrin he sings of the south: bouillabaisse with red mullet grilled over charcoal, strawberries with olives from Nyons, a vegetable menu called Korti, Savoyard patois for kitchen garden. The dining room is all alcoves, black velvet and local ceramics. When the snow melts, he heads south again to a bistro in the Vaucluse, true to his kind.
The song carries beyond the kitchen. Downstairs, the pool comes with geysers, a waterfall and a current to swim against, and teenagers are taught to DJ, which in a valley this orderly counts as mild anarchy. The finest hour comes at dusk, when skiers in thick socks drift into the bar, the fire crackles and the piano starts up, and for a while the anthill remembers how to dance.
Ants are not famous for surprises, and in places the hotel is a little too sensible. Fur, pine and firelight are exactly what Alpine chic is expected to look like, and the rooms startle nobody. A central address keeps the après-ski crowd within earshot, and in the school holidays the pool and the corridors belong to the children.
La Fontaine's ant shut the door and told the cicada to go and dance. Méribel's ant opened it, found the cicada an apron and a stove, and on a winter night at L'Ekrin, it is the ant who asks for more.
In the kids' club
Among the LEGO in the hotel's kids' club stands a model of the Méribel ski resort itself, built from the bricks, with pistes, lifts and chalets.
Laurent Azoulay took over this dining room on 1 December 2013 and now oversees Le 80 and the hotel's room service as well. Tables stand under a wooden ceiling, between lattice walls and red upholstered chairs. Two menus run side by side: the Ekrin menu and Korti, which follows the vegetable garden. Reservations go through the restaurant's own line.
In the spa, more than 250 m² are given over to water: a swimming and relaxation pool lit by daylight and facing the peaks, a marine-water circuit with geysers and massage seats, and a Jacuzzi set in an artificial grotto. Sauna, hammam and an ice fountain sit alongside, with a pool bar. The NUXE spa adds six treatment rooms, three of them doubles.
The Authentik Duplex is two family suites joined across two floors: 155 m² for five adults and two children, with views to the east. Downstairs a living room gathers a corner sofa, a fireplace and a long table; upstairs the master bedroom has a steam shower, and two children share a room with its own bathroom. A third, smaller children's room has a single bed.
The hotel's main bar is built around a large fireplace and a curved counter lit from below, with a head bartender who makes his own cocktails and keeps a selection of rarer spirits. It serves from lunch through tea time to the evening aperitif. For cigars there is a separate room, Le Kuba Lounge, furnished in weathered leather.
At a glance
Where
124 rue des Jeux Olympiques, 73550 Méribel (Les Allues), Savoie; in the centre of the resort, on the ski front of the Méribel valley in Les 3 Vallées, under a minute from the main lifts once on the piste. Moûtiers station 18 km; Chambéry airport 95 km, Geneva 135 km, Grenoble 170 km, Lyon 185 km; Méribel altiport about 10 minutes, with a shuttle for the last kilometre
Why this one
Out through the hotel's ski shop.
From the Alpine Junior Suite upwards.
Rooms and suites join up for families.
The Edit Notes
None of the four room categories lists a fireplace. The first real hearth comes with the Alpine Junior Suite, on an upper floor facing west, and the Neiges, Ekrin, Le Kaïla and Authentik suites all have one in the living room. The Exception suite has a wood-burning stove instead. Anyone booking Le Kaïla for an evening by the fire in private should start at the Alpine Junior Suite; below it, the nearest open fire is the one in the bar downstairs.
Views are set by category, and two of them have none. The Cocoon room, at 35 to 38 m², is larger than the Elegance and Signature rooms but is sold without a view, and the Loze two-bedroom suite has a furnished terrace, also without a view. Elegance rooms face east; Signature rooms look west towards the mountains; Alpine and Charm junior suites sit on upper floors facing west. For a window on the slopes, Signature is the entry point, not Cocoon.
Le Kaïla is laid out for families who want separate doors. Signature rooms connect to Privilege rooms or Prestige junior suites; the Flocon family suite adds a small children's bedroom with a single bed; the Neiges duplex gives two children their own room and bathroom upstairs. The Authentik Duplex joins these into 155 m² for five adults and two children. Several suites take a sofa bed for one child at extra cost, so count beds before choosing the category.
The hotel is open only from early December to early April, and L'Ekrin is its single gastronomic table, booked through its own reservation line rather than through reception. It offers two menus: the Ekrin menu and Korti, a vegetable menu that pairs the Savoyard kitchen garden with produce from Provence. Christmas and New Year's Eve have menus of their own. Fix the dinner when booking the nights; Le 80 and room service cover the other evenings.
The price question
The money buys a central Méribel address with skis on at the door, a gastronomic restaurant downstairs and suites built for families who want rooms that connect. It does not buy surprise: the decoration is classic Alpine wood, fur and firelight, the hotel closes from April to December, and its central position means the après-ski of the resort is close by. The comparison is a chalet with a cook, without the restaurant or the spa.
Book it for a week of skiing with children, in connecting rooms or a family suite with a fireplace, with one dinner at L'Ekrin fixed when the nights are booked. A couple looking for a quiet, design-led hotel outside the centre of a resort, or a visitor in summer, is better placed elsewhere.
Four Seasons Resort Megève
A ski-in, ski-out resort at about 1,300 metres on Mont d'Arbois: 55 rooms and suites, a two-level wine cellar, a 900 m² spa with an indoor-outdoor pool, and a kids' club and teen zone.
Aman Le Mélézin
A four-storey Aman house directly on the Bellecôte piste in Courchevel 1850, open for the winter season: 28 rooms, suites and apartments, a ski room with ski butlers, the Japanese restaurant Akari and a spa with a 14-metre pool.
The Extra Edit
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