It has been a long time since Joseph founded his "railroad hôtel-pension." From a little family-run inn located in the heart of the lovely village of Chamonix, the Hameau Albert I has evolved into a prestigious four-star hotel… and on July 3 and 4 it just blew out 100 birthday candles.

For those who aren't familiar with the establishment, we'll point out that you only need to lift your head to take in peaks and summits that soar to more than 3000 metres. So to properly celebrate the occasion, it was only appropriate that well-known personalities from the worlds of cooking and mountain-climbing should all head up for a picnic beside the ice field. They included Paul Bocuse, Pierre Troisgros, Jean Pierre Jacob, Pierre Carrier of course, and Jean-Louis Bottigliero, president of Relais & Châteaux. The mood was celebratory. The picnic "basket" contained ham from the Aosta valley, aged Tome cheese from the Valais region (eaten in thin slices after being shaved off with a plane), as well as Chamonix-style "farcon," a kind of potato cake containing prunes, bacon and raisins, cooked slowly at low heat. It's a typical Savoyard peasant dish - one that has also been around a long time! It provided meat (bacon), starch (potatoes) and dessert (prunes and raisins) in just one dish

all washed down with copious amounts of Ayze wine, the "champagne of Savoy."

After this luncheon, the guests gathered for a "Mountaineering and Gastronomy" roundtable to exchange insights into these two careers, both very different, yet each requiring a great deal of passion. Though the weather wasn't very nice, the clouds did provide a twenty-minute respite when they opened up like stage curtains onto the great face of the Drus, which looked as if they were arising out of nowhere. Imagine the faces of Messieurs Troisgros and Bocuse as they suddenly discovered this great mythical mountain. Christophe Profit who has climbed them explained: "Yes, you go straight through there into the great rock slabs, and then into the fissure…" René Desmaison, who made his first winter climb of the west face in 1957 and was stuck on the way for 6 days, explained the equipment of his era, including nailed boots.

In the evening, after aperitifs beside the pool where friends and customers had gathered, the gala dinner took place thanks to the complicity of Marc Veyrat and Jean Pierre Jacob. The menu spanned the century, each course recalling specialties of the succession of generations who have run this noble establishment.

The high point of the evening was the auctioning off of Marc Veyrat's hat, Paul Bocuse's jacket, Pierre Troisgros's plate and two jeroboams of Amour de Deutz 1995 champagne, signed by all the great chefs and by three generations of the Carrier family, as well as by Monsieur Rosset, president of Deutz champagnes - a spirited and laughter-filled occasion that highlighted the friendship between these chefs.

And then the evening's icing on the cake (literally) was the big birthday cake with its 100 candles, blown out by three generations of the Carrier family. (There have been five generations in the family business over the past hundred years.)

And a little anecdote from the evening: at three in the morning, during some group photos, Pierre Troisgros took the mike and began singing "Etoile des neiges" and some other little ditties. Wonderful ambiance, as you can imagine.

Friday at noon, they ascended to the Aiguille du Midi for a chefs' luncheon at 3800 metres, to launch "Mont Blanc and Gastronomy," a major trans-border association bringing together chefs from the Aosta valley, Savoy and Valais, as well as producers and winemakers from the three countries.

For the Swiss Valais
Roland Pierroz (founding member), Le Rosalp in Verbier

For Italy: Aosta Valley and Piedmont
Sponsor :

For the two Savoys


Nadia Santini, Restaurante dal Pescatore
Piero Roulet (founding member - RC), Hotel Bellevue
Corrado Neyroz, Hotel Hermitage (RC) Marc Veyrat, honorary president
Sponsors : (Paul Boccuse) and Pierre Troisgros
Members : Pierre Carrier (founding member), Le Hameau Albert 1er
Jean-Pierre Jacob, Ombremont
Sophie Bise, Auberge du Père Bise

…to mention only Relais & Châteaux members. This new association will directly affect gourmets and travellers since the establishments will soon be able to offer their clientele a veritable tour of Mont Blanc with gastronomic stopping points and tours of regional wine cellars.

Two emotion-filled days - but since all great celebrations linger on, other festivities are planned throughout 2003.

* Gala dinner and auction sale to benefit the "To each his Everest" association, founded by Christine Janin, a doctor and great mountaineer, the first woman to scale Everest in 1990, and the first European woman to conquer the world's seven 8000-metre-high summits in 1992. She now devotes herself to her association, aimed at helping young cancer and leukemia patients discover and embrace the route to healing by introducing them to the benefits of mountaineering and climbing.

It has been a long time since Joseph founded his "railroad hôtel-pension." From a little family-run inn located in the heart of the lovely village of Chamonix, the Hameau Albert I has evolved into a prestigious four-star hotel… and on July 3 and 4 it just blew out 100 birthday candles.

For those who aren't familiar with the establishment, we'll point out that you only need to lift your head to take in peaks and summits that soar to more than 3000 metres. So to properly celebrate the occasion, it was only appropriate that well-known personalities from the worlds of cooking and mountain-climbing should all head up for a picnic beside the ice field. They included Paul Bocuse, Pierre Troisgros, Jean Pierre Jacob, Pierre Carrier of course, and Jean-Louis Bottigliero, president of Relais & Châteaux. The mood was celebratory. The picnic "basket" contained ham from the Aosta valley, aged Tome cheese from the Valais region (eaten in thin slices after being shaved off with a plane), as well as Chamonix-style "farcon," a kind of potato cake containing prunes, bacon and raisins, cooked slowly at low heat. It's a typical Savoyard peasant dish - one that has also been around a long time! It provided meat (bacon), starch (potatoes) and dessert (prunes and raisins) in just one dish

all washed down with copious amounts of Ayze wine, the "champagne of Savoy."