Au Soleil

Au Soleil, Soultz-sous-Forêts: The Verdict

Alsace has no shortage of serious cooking tucked into small towns that most visitors drive past without stopping. If you are travelling through northern Alsace or making a deliberate detour from Strasbourg, this is worth the stop — particularly for lunch, where the value equation at this price tier tends to work most strongly.

What Au Soleil Is

The Michelin Plate is not a star, but it is a meaningful signal. Michelin awards the Plate to restaurants where inspectors find good cooking — precise technique, quality ingredients, consistent execution, without yet reaching the threshold for a full star. In a €€ price bracket, that credential carries real weight. It means the kitchen is performing above its price point, which is exactly the condition that makes a restaurant worth travelling for.

Au Soleil holds that designation for both 2024 and 2025, which confirms this is not a one-cycle anomaly. Sustained Michelin recognition at the €€ level, in a small Alsatian town, points to a kitchen that has found its register and is holding it. For context, the broader Alsace region has produced some of France's most enduring culinary addresses, Auberge de l'Ill in Illhaeusern being the obvious anchor, the regional tradition of precision cooking at accessible prices runs deep. Au Soleil fits that lineage without pretending to be something it is not.

The cuisine is classified as Modern Cuisine, which in northern Alsace typically means a kitchen working with classical French technique while drawing on local Alsatian produce and, in some cases, German-influenced flavour profiles from across the nearby border. The address, 34 Rue des Barons de Fleckenstein, puts it in the historic centre of Soultz-sous-Forêts, a town whose name references the forests of the Bas-Rhin département. The visual character of this part of Alsace is distinctive: half-timbered architecture, narrow streets, a quietness that makes a meal here feel removed from the usual restaurant-going circuit.

Lunch vs. Dinner at Au Soleil

At the €€ price range, the lunch sitting is almost certainly where the value case is strongest. French restaurants in this category frequently offer a weekday lunch formula, a set menu at a price that brings the kitchen's full technique within reach of a broader audience. If Au Soleil follows the standard Alsatian model, the lunchtime offer is likely to be a tighter, faster experience: fewer courses, a defined menu, strong value per euro spent. That makes it the logical entry point for first-time visitors or travellers passing through who want to assess the kitchen without committing to a full evening sitting.

Dinner at a Michelin Plate restaurant in this bracket tends to open up more: more courses, more time, potentially a wider à la carte selection, an atmosphere that settles into something more deliberate once the lunch crowd has cleared. For a food-focused traveller who has made a specific detour to Soultz-sous-Forêts, dinner is the format that allows you to sit with the cooking properly.

The practical case for lunch is also logistical. Soultz-sous-Forêts sits in the northern tip of the Alsace wine route, roughly 50 kilometres north of Strasbourg. If you are driving the route from south to north, from Auberge de l'Ill territory up through the Bas-Rhin, stopping here for lunch before continuing north or crossing into Germany makes geographic sense. Dinner requires either staying locally (see our full Soultz-sous-Forêts hotels guide) or a longer drive back, which changes the calculus depending on where you are based.

Who Should Book

Au Soleil is the right call for a food-focused traveller who wants Michelin-endorsed cooking at a price that does not require a special-occasion justification. At €€, this is a restaurant you can visit without building a trip around it, though it rewards those who do. It is also a strong option for anyone exploring the Alsace table more broadly; pairing it with a visit to the local wine producers (see our Soultz-sous-Forêts wineries guide) or the broader regional bar and dining scene (bars, restaurants) builds a coherent day in the northern Alsace.

For a comparative frame: if you are choosing between a meal here and making the longer drive to a three-star address like Arpège in Paris or Mirazur in Menton, the experiences are not comparable in scope or price. But Au Soleil is not trying to compete with those rooms. It is competing for the category of: serious, honest, Michelin-recognised cooking in a region where that tradition runs deep, at a price that makes the decision easy. On those terms, it delivers.

For travellers building a broader French regional dining itinerary, it sits naturally alongside destinations like Maison Lameloise in Chagny or Flocons de Sel in Megève as examples of serious cooking outside Paris that rewards the detour. The difference is price: Au Soleil at €€ is a lower-commitment version of that same instinct.

Practical Details

Au Soleil is at 34 Rue des Barons de Fleckenstein, 67250 Soultz-sous-Forêts, France. Price range: €€. Booking difficulty: easy. No website or phone number currently listed, contact details may be confirmed locally or via third-party reservation platforms. For more options in the area, see our Soultz-sous-Forêts experiences guide.

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