"We fell in love with La Roya": Camille and Thomas open their restaurant "La Maison de la Pia" in Tende

The ambition is clear: to showcase regional produce in a preserved natural setting. This Sunday, May 18, everything will be ready to make it happen with the pre-opening of La Maison de la Pia.

The restaurant and the two "domed" rooms are the challenge of Camille Burle and Thomas Guernion. They are among the young people who are revitalizing and reviving the Roya Valley... in a different way. After the destruction, renewal is taking place, and not just in the infrastructure. For this generation taking over, it is the desire for something else, it is the desire to build a philosophy of life, listening to others, to nature, and to the living. Camille and Thomas also wanted to shake up their world.

A well-targeted course

"We both attended the Ferrandi hotel school in Paris ," Thomas explains. "That's where we met," he smiles. The Ferrandi school trains the elite of French gastronomy and hotel management in France and internationally. This selective training then allowed them to join famous restaurants, L'Arpège by Alain Passard, 3-star chef, for Thomas, and Café Lai'Tcha by chef Adeline Grattard for Camille. But that was without counting on the call of their respective native lands: Provence and Nice. That's where they continued their journey. Camille joined the restaurant Le Canon and Thomas returned to his family roots at the pasta and ravioli factory Baral in old Nice.

Camille and Thomas complement each other harmoniously. "Camille is very professional ," Thomas says admiringly. "She loves discovering products, cooking them, and eating them! She always has a smile and is passionate about wine. She is a sommelier with very good advice." Camille sees her partner as "passionate about the products and the people around him. For him, that's the main focus. He is passionate about everything he undertakes and even more so about the cuisine he creates in the moment, on inspiration, while thinking about it beforehand." What they want is to cook well, tasty, and beautifully to enhance the flavors.

From the kitchen to the building

To settle in, they had to find THE place. "We discovered La Pia ," explains Camille, "and it was love at first sight. This house that was for sale made us take the plunge. The place is magnificent." For these two young people, barely thirty years old, it wasn't just an acquisition, it was rehabilitating this place to transform it into a restaurant. They, who had never done any work before, got their hands dirty. Here they are, architects, demolition workers, carpenters, builders. The two rooms are installed in domes that they erected on a terrace. In the house, they removed the rubble, scraped the walls to reveal the original stones, they plastered other parts, installed the materials, fixed the beams and the large bay windows that open onto a sublime landscape. They also recovered old leaf guards from Provence to make an original floor.

"The hardest part was cleaning them up," Thomas smiles. "At first, we did the work on weekends, while keeping our jobs in Nice, but it was exhausting with the hours we had." So they left everything behind and devoted a year to their project. And they can be proud of the result.

They have managed to preserve the soul of the house and preserve this local heritage. Guests will be able to admire the breathtaking scenery while savoring the menu, their taste buds awakened by the aromas of the kitchen opening onto the dining room. The rooms will be reserved for restaurant guests, who will thus be able to extend their evening without having to return to the mountain road.

But why here?

"We wanted to get away from the city and we fell in love with Roya," Camille explains enthusiastically. Thomas, for his part, was impressed by the work being done to rebuild after the storm. "Seeing all this is encouraging for the future. We have almost more of a social life here than in Nice with everything that's going on and the people we meet, they say in unison . In Nice we had long schedules and little time for ourselves. Here, things are very busy and we were very well received."

They will be open all year round, although winter will be reserved for groups. A local clientele is expected, "to immerse themselves in the greenery" , as well as hikers, people who come from further afield and who want to discover this place as well as exceptional cuisine.

They themselves describe their business: "local cuisine, natural wines, rooms in the mountains, everything is designed for an experience rooted in the terroir, where authenticity and quality prevail."

(*) Pre-opening of La Maison de la Pia Sunday, June 18th from 12pm to 6pm. No reservation necessary. A small party to discover the place, stands of local products for snacks, ice creams from the Pélissero farm, a refreshment bar, will be offered. The official opening of the restaurant and rooms (exclusively reserved for restaurant guests) will take place on Thursday, May 22nd. Information and reservations on the website: lamaisondelapia.com