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Cafe Face-West Restaurant Review
Excellent Location for Lunch in the Sunshine, Very Good Pizzas
Lunch on the mountain in February can often be a case of huddling indoors, conserving body heat, draping your gloves/socks/feet/body over the nearest heat source in an attempt to dry out and warm up. Wednesday was not one of those days, as - despite being Europe's highest ski resort - Val Thorens was basking in cloudless, toasty blue skies as we took a couple of seats at Face West Café.
Face West sits right on the front de neige, next door to the Tourist Office - so you can easily stop in while skiing, or stroll up on foot if you are having a lazy day. Despite being 12.30 on a gloriously sunny day in the middle of half-term week, we managed to find a couple of chairs and sat down in the Parisian-style seating section (ie long rows of chairs all placed shoulder to shoulder, with one table shared between every two chairs - so head round to the tables further back if you are a big group with plenty to chat about!).
Service was prompt, and also fairly Parisian actually: perfectly pleasant, but with the slightly unsettling habit of gazing through/over us while we were ordering, just in case a richer/more beautiful customer was sitting down elsewhere. (In fairness to our waiter, I suspect we were neither the richest or most beautiful customers he had that day, and so I don't really blame him). We only had a 45-minute window, and he said that would be no problem at all - we ordered a Prosciutto & Funghi pizza (18.30€), a Club Sandwich (8.90€) and a carafe of tap water. They had all appeared within 5 minutes - which would ordinarily be slightly worrying, but I have to say it was all very good. In particular, the huge pizza which had a crisp, almost pancake-esque base and was topped with rocket, parmesan, mushrooms, prosciutto and olives, plus a healthy drizzle of the feisty chilli oil left on our table. The Club Sandwich was more basic, but came with a very reasonable portion of fries, and rendered me suitably dozy for the next 20 minutes or so.
Although we were in a bit of a rush, we were still able to lean back and sneak a few minutes sun-bathing, only breaking from the semi-snooze when two girls offering freebie shots of Ricard and some other equally delightful/disgusting (delete as appropriate) liqueur strolled over and blocked out the sun. Alas, work was calling and so we had to refuse the booze to head back to the car - but it had been an excellent pit-stop, and you could do much worse than pencil in a lunch here!
