Restaurant in Soultz-sous-Forêts, France
Michelin-endorsed cooking at everyday French prices.
A Michelin Plate-recognised modern cuisine restaurant in northern Alsace, priced at €€ with a 4.5 Google rating across 244 reviews. Au Soleil is the strongest case for serious, affordable cooking in Soultz-sous-Forêts — book it for lunch if you are driving the Alsace route, or dinner if you are making a deliberate stop. Easy to book, consistently rated, and worth the detour.
Alsace has no shortage of serious cooking tucked into small towns that most visitors drive past without stopping. Au Soleil, on the Rue des Barons de Fleckenstein in Soultz-sous-Forêts, is precisely that kind of place: a Michelin Plate-recognised modern cuisine restaurant in a town of fewer than 5,000 people, priced at €€ and rated 4.5 across 244 Google reviews. 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.
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 , and 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, and a quietness that makes a meal here feel removed from the usual restaurant-going circuit.
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, and 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 4.5 Google rating across 244 reviews suggests consistent satisfaction across both formats, which is a stronger signal than a handful of five-star reviews , it implies the kitchen is reliable rather than occasionally brilliant.
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.
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.
Au Soleil is at 34 Rue des Barons de Fleckenstein, 67250 Soultz-sous-Forêts, France. Price range: €€. Michelin Plate 2024 and 2025. Google rating: 4.5 (244 reviews). 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.
Quick reference: €€ Michelin Plate modern cuisine in northern Alsace , easy to book, strong lunch value, reliable across 244 reviews.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Booking Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Au Soleil | Modern Cuisine | €€ | Easy |
| Plénitude | Contemporary French | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Pierre Gagnaire | French, Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen | Creative | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Kei | Contemporary French, Modern Cuisine | €€€€ | Unknown |
| Le Cinq - Four Seasons Hôtel George V | French, Modern Cuisine | €€€€ | Unknown |
What to weigh when choosing between Au Soleil and alternatives.
At the €€ price range, Au Soleil delivers strong value for Michelin Plate cooking — the inspector-endorsed standard signals precise, serious work without the cost of a starred table. For this level of culinary credibility at this price point in Alsace, it is a straightforward yes. If you want a full fine-dining spend, that is a different category.
It works for a low-key special occasion where the priority is good food over grand theatre. The Michelin Plate recognition (2024 and 2025) gives it enough credibility to mark an occasion, but at €€ it is more intimate dinner than destination celebration. For a milestone requiring serious ceremony, a starred Alsace address would be the better call.
Solo diners who want Michelin-endorsed modern cooking without the commitment of a full tasting menu format typically find €€ French restaurants in this category comfortable. The address — 34 Rue des Barons de Fleckenstein — is a small-town Alsatian setting, which tends toward relaxed rather than formal room dynamics. Specific counter or bar seating is not confirmed in the available data.
Bar seating is not confirmed in the venue data for Au Soleil. check the venue's official channels before arriving with that expectation, as small modern-cuisine restaurants in this category in France do not always operate a bar dining format.
Group suitability is not specified in the available venue data. For parties of four or more, it is worth contacting Au Soleil at 34 Rue des Barons de Fleckenstein, Soultz-sous-Forêts, to confirm table availability and any private dining arrangements. At the €€ price range, per-head costs stay manageable for group bookings.
Au Soleil is the only Michelin Plate holder documented in Soultz-sous-Forêts, so within the town itself there is no direct like-for-like alternative at this recognition level. For comparable Michelin-endorsed modern cuisine in the wider Bas-Rhin area, look at the broader Alsace restaurant listings — the region has a high density of Michelin-recognised addresses relative to its size.
Specific menu formats and pricing are not confirmed in the available data. At the €€ price range, a tasting menu at Au Soleil — if offered — would represent one of the more affordable ways to eat through a Michelin Plate kitchen in France. Confirm current menu options directly with the restaurant before booking around that format.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
