Club 55 opened in 1955 on Pampelonne Beach in Ramatuelle, three kilometres south of Saint-Tropez. The occasion was the filming of And God Created Woman and director Roger Vadim needed a place to feed the cast. The crew ate here daily. Brigitte Bardot stayed. The caterer became the restaurant, and the restaurant became, over seventy years, the most written-about beach club in Europe. Jacqueline deKé — whose family still runs the property — told journalists in 2024 she never intended to build a legend, she intended to serve a good lunch. Both things happened.
What It Is | A Restaurant That Happens to Be on a Beach
The distinction matters. Club 55 is not a day-club, not a bottle-service operation, and not principally a sunbathing venue with food attached. It is a seated, service-first restaurant that operates on sand under canvas shade structures. Tables are close together. The room — and it does feel like a room despite being open to the sea — has an easy noise level at lunch, a clientele that is mixed in age and mostly French or Italian, and a dress code best described as the best version of unstudied. Guests sit for three hours. Nobody is playing music at beach-club volume. A lunch of artichauts à la vinaigrette, grilled sea bass, and a carafe of Château Minuty white wine is prepared with the kind of calm competence that arrives only from doing one thing correctly for seven decades.
What to Order | The Non-Negotiable List
The menu changes minimally with the season but the permanent pillars are: the raw vegetable platter with anchoïade (a whole artichoke, radishes, and fennel with a warm anchovy cream — order this first as a table), tuna tartare with avocado, grilled whole dorade with lemon and herbs, and the dessert tray, which is wheeled to the table and from which you should take the crème catalane and the tarte tatin if it is on. The wine list is deliberately Provence-centric: Château Minuty, Domaines Ott, Miraval, Peyrassol. A correct pairing for a table of four at lunch is a magnum of Minuty Rosé 281 (approximately €220) with a half-bottle of a white Côtes de Provence with the fish. The Minuty 281 pours a very pale copper and has more structure than the average Riviera pink.
How to Book | Practical Notes for 2026
Club 55 takes reservations by phone and via the form at club55.fr. For July and August, the booking window opens in March and the best tables along the beach terrace fill within days. A reservation for a party of two at 1:00 PM in peak July requires either booking in March or accepting a 12:00 PM or 2:30 PM time. Walk-ins are accepted if the restaurant is below capacity but this is rare on any weekend between June 20 and September 1. Groups of eight or more should contact the private dining team at least four months in advance. Lunch is the only service. The restaurant does not open for dinner. Dress is resort casual; guests arriving in beachwear without a cover-up are politely redirected.
Cost | 2026 Reality Check
Lunch for two, with a shared first course, two main courses, dessert, and a half-bottle of rosé runs €280-€380. With a full bottle of wine and mineral water it reaches €400-€450 regularly. A table of four with a magnum of Minuty, a full round of starters, four mains, and a dessert tray visit lands between €700 and €900. There is no cover charge, no minimum spend, and no entrance fee. Beach chairs are available to table guests for a €60-€80 per person supplement and are worth it if you arrive early and intend to remain for the afternoon. Club 55 earns its bill for what the experience actually is, which is a nearly perfect piece of French coastal hospitality in one of the most aggressively mythologized locations in Europe. The alternative framing is that you can eat equally good food at a local restaurant in Ramatuelle village for one-third the price. Both framings are correct.
Getting There | The Pampelonne Parking Note
Pampelonne Beach has no convenient drop-off. Self-drive from Saint-Tropez takes 12 minutes but parking is managed by the municipality, costs €15-€25 per day, and fills by 10 AM in August. The recommended approach is to hire a driver from your hotel in Saint-Tropez for the day, or to book the private shuttle that Club 55 coordinates from Place des Lices. Water taxi from Saint-Tropez harbour to the beach landing adjacent to Club 55 takes 8 minutes and costs €40-€60 per person; the boat operator Taxi Boats de Saint-Tropez runs the service from 10 AM. This is the correct method in August. For a longer Riviera stay, read our profiles of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes and Château de la Chèvre d'Or in Èze, or compare with the La Réserve de Ramatuelle property one kilometre south for a hotel alternative with direct beach access.