Dining in Les Gets
Les Gets has a good range of options, whether you want to feast on the mountaintop at midday, dine out every night, or cook up a storm at home using local ingredients.
Mountain Restaurants
Mountain restaurants are something of a forte of Les Gets with more than a dozen to choose from (one per 10km of piste) and almost all in traditional wooden chalet buildings serving up filling homemade cuisine. La Païka (+33 (0)4 50 92 85 22; restaurant-paika.com) in the La Turche sector on the Vorosses piste is typical, with a wood stove out on its terrace and a rustic, friendly indoor dining area too. Le Belvédère (+33 (0)6 16 42 27 76) is another good choice with a beautifully appointed wooden dining room and La Grande Ourse (+33 (0)6 79 42 58 86) is a "British" restaurant (higher up on the slopes of Mont Chery) with a wonderful view of the Mont Blanc range, a big terrace, and refined food.
Restaurants in Town
There are about 40 places to eat around Les Gets so there’s plenty of choice, although the vast majority serve traditional Savoyard dishes and international food.
Among the pick of the bunch the restaurant in the recently renovated AlpenHotel provides delicious original Savoyard cuisine such as la potée Savoyarde and le lapin polenta.
Several establishments serve Italian if you fancy a pizza night, including Le Flambeau (+33 (0)4 50 79 80 66) and La Tanière (+33 (0)4 50 79 87 08) while Le Point Gets (+33 (0)4 50 75 24 48) provides more of a brasserie experience. Among the three creperies, Mémé Confiture (+33 (0)4 50 79 80 90) is one of the best.
At the top end of the dining experience in Les Gets, les "incontournables" : La Fruitière des Perrières, l'Outa or Le Saint Laurent for gastronomic food.
Grocery Shops
The farming heritage of Les Gets is evident in the dozen or so stores selling local goods. There are two bakeries for your morning croissant and baguette and also several butchers shops in the village. One of these, Rossin (510 rue du centre; boucherierossin.com) also provides a deli service. Three generations of Rossins have worked in the family business since the shop first hung up its sign back in 1945. Today they serve a wide choice of local produce, made on the premises in their smoking, salting and drying rooms in the shop’s basement. These include tasty ham, either smoked or ‘old-fashioned’ (hand-rubbed with salt), cured or raw sausages, ‘rosette’, dried beef slices, paté and ‘diots’ (Savoyard sausages).
The Perrières dairy is another institution in Les Gets. For nearly a hundred years it has produced excellent local cheeses (Tomme de montagne, Reblochon, Raclette). They can all be tasted at this charming ferme-auberge served up in different Savoyard specialities. Unusually the head cheese-maker is Miti, a young Japanese man passionate about the local Getoise traditions. As a student in Japan, he decided to come to France as an agricultural student having seen the Alps on Japanese TV during the Tour de France. Miti makes cheese each day and demonstrates his know-how during organised weekly visits to the dairy throughout the season. Enthusiastic and creative, Miti has also created his own cheeses, a Les Gets Bleu (a blue Tomme) and a Gruyère which have proved a roaring gastronomic success.
There are several more local food shops, a weekly market on Thursday mornings and a Shopi supermarket. One shop not to be missed for Chocaholics is Le Chalet du Chocolat (Rue du Centre) which is full of gorgeous home made chocolate.