Club 55, Pampelonne: How to Arrive by Tender and What to Order

Where is Club 55, and why arrive by boat?

Club 55 sits about a third of the way along Pampelonne, the five-kilometre sweep of pale sand that runs south from Saint-Tropez below the village of Ramatuelle. By road it is the hard way in. The lanes behind the beach clog with traffic from late morning through summer, and the walk from the nearest car park is long and hot.

By sea it is effortless. Your captain anchors off Pampelonne among the summer fleet, the water in front of you is turquoise and swimmable, and the club is a short tender ride from the back of the boat. Arriving this way is half the pleasure, and it is exactly how the place was built to be reached.

How do you actually get ashore?

Pampelonne's clubs are set up for tender arrivals, and Club 55 is no exception. Your boat anchors offshore, usually within sight of the restaurant, and you come in by tender to the pontoon rather than dragging the day around a marina.

The practical part is simple. When you book, give the restaurant your boat's name so they know to expect you from the water. Your crew radios ahead as you approach, and the tender drops you more or less at your table. When lunch winds down, the same tender runs you back out to the yacht. No docking, no taxi, no shoes required until the pontoon.

Because the boat stays at anchor while you are ashore, there is no clock running on a berth and no rush to get back. You can swim off the back of the boat before lunch, tender in when your table is ready, and swim again afterwards.

When should you book?

This is the one piece of the day you have to lock in early. Club 55 is the original Saint-Tropez beach club and its fame has never faded, so tables, especially the ones you actually want, go well in advance through the season.

In July and August, book a week or more ahead, and further out again for a front-row table or a peak weekend. In June and September a few days' notice is usually enough. If you are chartering with us, our team handles the reservation and coordinates the timing with your captain, so the boat and the table are never out of sync.

Everything else about a Pampelonne day can stay flexible. Lunch at Club 55 cannot. Treat it as the fixed point the rest of the day is built around.

What should you order?

Club 55 has never tried to be complicated, and that is the whole point. The food is Provençal and unfussy: fresh, simple and built for a long lunch in the shade.

Start with the panier de crudités. This is the dish the place is famous for, a generous basket of raw seasonal vegetables brought to the table to share, dressed simply and meant to be picked at slowly over conversation and rosé. It has been the club's signature for decades and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

Drink the rosé, chilled and Provençal, because that is what this coast does better than anywhere. Beyond that, keep it simple: grilled fish, salads and whatever is fresh and in season, eaten unhurried under the pines. This is not a tasting-menu kind of lunch. It is the kind where a second bottle arrives and nobody checks the time.

What is the atmosphere like?

Barefoot glamour is the phrase that gets used, and for once it fits. Club 55 is polished without being stiff. There are pines for shade, sand underfoot, and a crowd that ranges from long-time regulars to charter guests who have anchored offshore for the afternoon, but nobody is dressed for dinner and nobody is in a hurry.

That understatement is the surprising thing about it. Given everything Saint-Tropez has become, you might expect the original beach club to trade hardest on the glitz. It does not. Lunch here still feels relaxed and unshowy, which is exactly why it has outlasted every trend to pass along this beach.

A little history

Club 55 opened in 1955, the year that gives it its name, when a film crew shooting And God Created Woman with Brigitte Bardot needed feeding on this stretch of beach. The beach kitchen that fed them never really closed, and it grew into the institution that helped define Pampelonne long before Saint-Tropez became the global summer destination it is today. Knowing that adds something to the lunch. You are eating at the place where the whole Pampelonne beach-club idea effectively began.

When is the best time to go?

Like most of Pampelonne's clubs, Club 55 runs on the summer season, roughly mid-May to late September, and winds down outside it. June and early September are the sweet spot: the club is open, the water is warm, and both the village and the beach are still breathable. July and August bring the full spectacle and the most people, so book early and lean on the earlier end of the midday window.

A word on the weather from your captain's point of view. Pampelonne is open to the east, so an easterly wind can make the anchorage rolly. When that happens, a good captain simply shifts the day toward the sheltered side of the peninsula. Plage des Salins, the wilder, pine-backed beach just east of the village, is the classic fallback and a long-time favourite anchorage. One more reason to keep the day flexible around the one fixed table.

Do it properly, by boat

Club 55 was made to be arrived at by sea. Anchoring off Pampelonne, tendering in for the panier de crudités and a glass of cold rosé under the pines, then swimming off the back of the boat either side of lunch, is about as good as a Riviera afternoon gets.

If you want to build a day around it, chartering with Ahoy Days is the simplest way to do it. Book on the go, get matched with a day boat on the French Riviera, and let your captain handle the anchoring and timing while you handle the lunch. Your only real decision is how long to stay, and the honest answer is always longer than you planned.