Complices

Modern Cooking in a Spa Town That Rarely Gets Credit for Either

Dax is not a city that travels well in food conversations. Its reputation rests firmly on thermal water and mud treatments, drawing visitors who come to recover rather than to eat. The dining scene reflects that orientation: it is functional more than ambitious, built around hotel restaurants and brasseries that serve a clientele with other priorities. Complices, on Cours Gallieni, sits at the accessible end of the price range, the €€ bracket, which means it is not competing with the destination kitchens of southwest France, but it is doing something more considered than the town's default register suggests is possible.

The Michelin Plate is often misread. It is not a star, and it does not carry the institutional weight of the recognition that places like Mirazur in Menton or Troisgros in Ouches have accumulated over decades. What it does signal is that Michelin's inspectors found cooking worth noting in a location they would not automatically prioritise. For a town like Dax, that is a meaningful distinction. The inspectors came, they ate, and they recorded it. In the broader geography of French gastronomy, a field with anchor points at Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen, Flocons de Sel in Megève, and Auberge de l'Ill in Illhaeusern, Complices occupies a very different tier, but the fact that it registers at all in that system says something useful.

Sophie and Hugo: Two Chefs, One Editorial Point About French Provincial Cooking

French regional cooking has always depended on pairs and small teams rather than the singular auteur model that dominates Paris press coverage. Many of the country's most durable provincial kitchens, think Bras in Laguiole or Auberge du Vieux Puits in Fontjoncouse, carry a family logic, a shared sensibility that develops over time in close quarters. Complices is run by Sophie and Hugo, and the name itself, French for accomplices or co-conspirators, signals something about how they conceive of the operation: collaborative rather than hierarchical. In a town that has not historically supported ambitious cooking, running a modern cuisine restaurant as a two-person creative project is a pragmatic as well as an artistic choice. It keeps the operation lean and keeps the intent concentrated.

The editorial angle of EA-GN-01 asks what a chef's background reveals about the cooking. Complices does not appear to trade on lineage from famous kitchens or a publicly documented apprenticeship under a named figure. That ratio matters. In a town whose hospitality economy is structured around short thermal cure stays, building repeat custom is harder than it looks. The numbers suggest Sophie and Hugo have managed it.

What Modern Cuisine Means at the €€ Level in the French Southwest

Modern cuisine as a category label covers a wide range. At the €€€€ end, it encompasses the technical ambition of kitchens like AM par Alexandre Mazzia in Marseille or the precision of Assiette Champenoise in Reims. At the €€ level, it tends to mean something more grounded: a clear preference for seasonal product over formula, technique applied with intention rather than spectacle, and a menu that changes with the market rather than locking into a permanent format. The Landes region provides excellent raw material, duck, foie gras, asparagus, Piment d'Espelette from just across the border in the Basque Country, and a kitchen that calls itself modern cuisine in this geography would be expected to work with that larder rather than against it.

For comparison, Paul Bocuse in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or and Au Crocodile in Strasbourg represent an older French kitchen logic, where the institution and the tradition carry the weight. Complices operates at the opposite end of that spectrum: small, current, and at a price point that makes it accessible to a broader diner rather than a special-occasion only proposition. That accessibility, in a market where serious cooking often prices itself out of regular use, is part of the editorial point.

Planning a Visit: What to Know Before You Go

Complices is at 44 Cours Gallieni, in the centre of Dax, which is navigable on foot from the main thermal district. Booking in advance is advisable for any small restaurant with this level of local recognition, Michelin Plate status in 2025 will have widened its catchment beyond the immediate neighbourhood.

For visitors structuring a broader trip around the Landes and the Basque Country, Dax works well as a base: the thermal infrastructure means accommodation options are plentiful, and the town is within easy reach of the Atlantic coast and the southern Landes forest. EP Club's full Dax restaurants guide covers the wider dining picture, while the Dax hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide round out the full picture for a stay of more than a night.

For those whose interest in French modern cuisine extends to the higher tiers, the contrast with kitchens like Frantzén in Stockholm or FZN by Björn Frantzén in Dubai is instructive, same broad category, radically different scale, price, and ambition. Complices is not trying to compete in that league. It is doing something more specific: producing recognisably modern cooking in a location that does not reward excess ambition with a wealthy, food-focused clientele.