Restaurant review: Le Club 55, Saint-Tropez
Don't wear your fancy shoes to Le Club 55. Trust me on this. You'll spend most of lunch with your feet in the sand and a glass of ice-cold rosé in your hand, and you'll thank yourself for the flip-flops.The OG of Pampelonne beach clubs has been doing exactly this since 1955, and on a clear-blue June
Restaurant review: Le Club 55, Saint-Tropez
Don't wear your fancy shoes to Le Club 55. Trust me on this. You'll spend most of lunch with your feet in the sand and a glass of ice-cold rosé in your hand, and you'll thank yourself for the flip-flops.
The OG of Pampelonne beach clubs has been doing exactly this since 1955, and on a clear-blue June afternoon we finally pulled into the car park of the Saint-Tropez institution to see for ourselves what the fuss is about.
Three Ways to Arrive
There are essentially three ways to get to Le Club 55.
- By boat. The classic. Yachts of every size moor just off the beach and a small fleet of tenders ferries tanned, sunglassed, glossy people from boat to shore in the steady choreography that defines a summer day on Pampelonne.
- By car. Less glamorous, much more practical. There's a car park at the restaurant which fills up quickly in peak season - we drove in with two children and a beach bag, which is its own kind of charm.
- By taxi or transfer. Probably the easiest if you're staying in Saint-Tropez itself. The lanes down to Pampelonne are narrow and parking gets tight by lunchtime, so letting someone else worry about it has obvious appeal.
However you arrive, Le Club 55 is - refreshingly - not snobby about it. The crowd in June was much more family-heavy than I'd expected. Kids charging between tables, parents gossiping over rosé, the odd elegant couple drifting through. Whatever you imagine the place to be, the reality is gentler and more relaxed than the postcard.
The Atmosphere Is the Whole Show
This is what you come for. The striped umbrellas, the timber tables, the breeze off the Mediterranean, the sand - actual sand - shifting under your toes while you're meant to be eating. There's a particular kind of effortless that only happens in places that have been doing things the same way for seventy years. Nobody is trying. Nobody needs to.
The kids were in heaven. There's something about a restaurant where your shoes can come off and the surface beneath the table is the beach itself that lets even the busiest small person settle.
What About the Food?
I'll be honest with you, because I think you'd want me to be. The food is fine. The food is not why you come.
I had the salade niçoise, my husband had the chicken. Both perfectly nice, simple, well done in the way you'd expect from a beach club that has nothing left to prove. If you're coming for the kind of cooking we had at Jardin Tropéziana, you'll be left wanting. If you're coming for a beautifully dressed plate of something easy to eat in the sun while your children run laps around the umbrellas, you'll be very happy indeed.
The rosé, however, deserves its own paragraph. Ice cold - properly, satisfyingly ice cold - in a way that takes a Provence summer and crystallises it into something you can drink. We ordered a glass. Then a bottle. Then we stayed a little longer than planned. It is, I think, the single best argument for being at Le Club 55 at lunchtime in June.
My Tips
- Don't wear your fancy shoes. I cannot stress this enough. Flat sandals you don't mind getting sandy, ideally something you can slip off entirely.
- Book ahead. Months ahead. This isn't a place you turn up at on the day in July or August. Keep in mind reservations are via phone only!
- Bring the kids. Genuinely - it's one of the most family-friendly fancy-name restaurants we've been to. The setting absorbs them and the staff are unbothered.
- Order the rosé, not the food. I mean, order food too. But know what you're here for.
- Dress for the brief. Linen, a great hat, sunglasses you'd defend with your life. You'll know it when you see it.
- Don't forget to pop into the little shop (it's on the far side of the beach club) and buy the iconic Club 55 cap
The Verdict
Le Club 55 isn't about the food. It's about a certain kind of long, sun-bleached lunch that you can only really have here, on this beach, under those umbrellas, with the boats bobbing offshore and a glass of properly cold rosé sweating on the timber in front of you. You don't come for the salad. You come because seventy years of glamorous people have been coming, and on a clear June afternoon you understand exactly why.
Would I go back? Yes. I'd just go knowing what it is. The food is the supporting cast. The vibe is the star, and at Le Club 55 the star still very much delivers.
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