Auberge Stays in the French Countryside
La Colline du Colombier
"Those buildings look like they came from Mars," commented a beret-wearing local farmer as he cycled past this auberge in the Burgundy town of Iguerande. It's actually the dream project of the great French chef Michel Troisgros.
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La Cour de Remi
When Balthazar and Sébastien de La Borde inherited an 1825 mansion in Bermicourt, two-and-a-half hours north of Paris, the experience changed their lives. Because the tobacco farming that had helped pay for the property's upkeep in their great-grandfather's day was on the wane, the brothers gave up careers as Paris businessmen and decided to convert the outbuildings into an auberge.
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Les Flocons de Sel
Perched on a hillside overlooking the eternally chic Alpine town of Megève, Kristine and Emmanuel Renaut's six-room chalet has the most exciting restaurant in the French Alps. Emmanuel creates the modern Alpine cuisine, including a starter of smoked hen eggs with Reblochon cheese emulsion and white truffles. Rooms have fancy details like fur throws and cowhide chairs, and several have wood-burning fireplaces.
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La Grenouillere
"I want to show the wild side of the produce I cook with, so sometimes I treat it with violence," says chef Alexandre Gauthier, who owns this auberge in Madelaine-Sous-Montreuil, Pas-de-Calais. Instead of serving lobster tail in a pleasant cream sauce, he roasts it in a super-hot oven, takes it out of the shell and sends it to the table in a nest of smoldering juniper boughs. What Gauthier calls his "radical and singular, pertinent and impertinent" cooking has made him just about the hottest young chef in France.
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Hegia
When French chefs burn out from working in city restaurants, they seem to recover by cooking in the countryside. That's what Arnaud Daguin did: After running the busy, Michelin-starred Les Platanes in Biarritz for years, he moved to a 1746 farmhouse outside the quiet town of Hasparren in the Basque Country.
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Château Les Carrasses
Irish hotelier Karl O'Hanlon converted a white turreted chateau in Languedoc's Quarante, surrounded by vineyards, into an auberge and wine estate. The eight-acre property includes suites in the 1886 limestone manor house and cottages that were created from outbuildings, like the former grape picker's lodge.
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Auberge de la Source
Just outside the 11th-century Norman port of Honfleur, in Barneville-La-Bertran, this 15-room auberge was created from several 18th-century half-timbered farm buildings by owner Jean-Marie Boelen. "At the beginning of a new century, it seemed to me the time was right to return to the original values of the French auberge—friendly hospitality, a comfortable and reasonably priced room, good regional food made with seasonal local produce and a strong sense of place" says Boelen.