The venue, with its cathedral-like foyer/wine room/bar and intimate sky blue ceilinged dining room, is small but grand and surely cost a small fortune. The menu is similarly ambitious, featuring four pages of French dishes with a Mediterranean slant made with the finest imported ingredients money can buy. At the helm is Chef (and co-owner) Herve Frerard, a talented perfectionist who anxiously watches diners through the huge glass window that separates the kitchen from the 30-seat dining room. Eating here is easy (if you can afford it), but, like the décor, a lot of work goes into creating the food, which can be deceptively complex. The classic dish sole muniere, an occasional special (around B1,700), is a whole fish with the filets painstakingly removed and then artfully presented with the intact skeleton of the fish, for example. The vegetables in dishes containing several different kinds of vegetables are so perfectly cooked, we’d guess that they were prepared separately; and the rich veal jus is the real deal—deliciously thick and full of concentrated flavor. Chef Ferard apparently has a thing for artichokes, and if you’re a fan of the flower you must try his exquisite artichoke soup (B420). The vegetable also makes appearances in other dishes, from an amuse bouche to baked john dory served with Provencale vegetables that is part of a six-course decouverte, or “discovery,” menu (B1,950), which could easily feed two (or even three) people. The service could use some improvement, but still, after only a half year in business, Le Beaulieu deserves to be counted among Bangkok’s top fine dining restaurants.