Louise is known as a Monaco insider. As well as writing about the principality for numerous publications across the globe, she is interviewed regularly about life in Monte Carlo (such as CBS Broadcasting with Peter Greenberg). Summer 2018 sees Louise taking over as food & wine columnist for Monaco’s daily news site and periodical, Hello Monaco. Previously she spent five years as the food & wine columnist for Monaco Life where her acerbic restaurant reviews became a viral sensation and where she interviewed numerous celebrities for her Lunch with Monaco Life series. 

Monaco’s answer to Giles Coren, Louise is at once erudite and down-to-earth. She has changed the face of the principality’s dining scene with such spellbinding style that readers and restaurateurs alike respect her."

 Ian Brodie, Editor-in-Chief @ Monaco Life

Match Point for Eqvita

 “Eat your vegetables.” This mantra is on the lips of everyone from our parents to our governments, while even geniuses such as Einstein and Tolstoy were known to wax lyrical about the benefits of greens. For the past couple of million years, we have foraged all manner of edible plant parts from beetroots, asparagus stems and spinach leaves to globe artichoke bracts, broccoli flower buds and courgette
petals. In the absence of any botanical meaning, we have branded these plant parts as vegetables and endowed them with superhuman health benefits overflowing with vitamins, minerals and fibre.

If vegetables are the elixir of health, then by extension a vegan restaurant must be health nirvana. So I’m excited to be trying out Eqvita, the principality’s new vegan restaurant set up by tennis star Novak Djokovic and his wife Jelena. 

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Song for your Supper

 The time of year has come for lounging upon a beach recliner with a book. My current read is about Quantum Physics. I’ve just finished a chapter on wave-particle duality: the theory that light can behave as both a wave and a particle. In other words, light can be both at the same time*.

Being two things at once brings me to Song Qi, the brainchild of serial restaurant entrepreneur Alan Yau. On the one hand, Song Qi is the perfect restaurant. Everything works seamlessly from the smiling waiting staff to the stylish interior decor. The dining room resonates understated affluence from the chartreuse-velour seating to the marble tables and central crescent of golden poles. Even the black-lacquered ladies’ room feels luxurious.

My partner and I went recently for lunch and ordered two 29-euro lunchtime set menus: 

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The Quiet Revolutionary

Louise Simpson lunches with Joël Robuchon, the world’s most Michelin-starred chef

“I’ll never achieve everything I’d like to in life because I have so many projects in my head,” says Joël Robuchon.

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Searching for Tight Lines in a Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of sunrises. It was the worst of hangovers. My fishing trip had been postponed twice due to high winds so the expedition had fallen finally on the morrow of my birthday celebrations. Arriving at Port Hercule for 7am, my partner and I stepped gingerly aboard the fishing boat feeling a little green around the gills. Rugged fisherman Eric Rinaldi gave us his forearm to avoid a fishy handshake.

The Rinaldis mean to fishing in Monaco what the Rosbergs mean to motorsports. With fishing roots in the principality for over a century, the family moved from Ventimiglia to Monaco after WW1. Eric is the fourth generation of the Rinaldi fishing clan. You could say that fishing is in his DNA. 

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