Le Doyenné, Paris: a French farm-to-table dining experience - International Travel

Dec 16, 2025

Joanna Savill discovers an Australian-French farm-to-table restaurant and guesthouse in the village of Saint-Vrain that’s truly walking the walk.

It may be a first. Either way, let’s claim regenerative farmers, restaurateurs and hoteliers took out the 2023 Best Table award by Le Fooding, the go-to French restaurant, bar and eating guide. That was late last year, just months after James Henry and Shaun Kelly swung open the barn doors of Le Doyenné, a gloriously countrified, floor-to-ceiling glass dining room on the outskirts of Paris. They began feeding visitors directly with the bounty from their vegetable garden, fruit trees, greenhouse, chook shed and pigs.

Farm-to-table eating is a French focus, going back to the country’s culinary roots at a time when supporting and eating local has become more important than ever.

And yes, Le Doyenné (literally ‘the deanery ’) is all about le potager – the kitchen garden. But it’s also an immersive experience, from the moment you enter the expansive walled grounds of Château de Saint-Vrain, a once-aristocratic country estate dating back to the 15th century.

Set over six hectares and formerly the estate’s stables and barn, Le Doyenné is a place to sit, eat, drink, take a guided garden stroll and then (why not?) stay the night. A series of newly renovated, beautifully understated guestrooms looking out over fields of flourishing edible greenery encourage diners to sleep over. That way, you can start the next day with excellent house-baked bread and pastries, prolonging the pleasure before heading back to the real world.

The accolades keep coming. A Green Star in the latest Michelin Guide, glowing reviews in the French press and, as a PR in the old-school world of the 50 Best and Michelin said to me just recently, “This is the way we want restaurants to be”

“Sometimes we need to take a step back to realise this is actually happening, envisioning something and seeing it through,” Henry says, somewhat modestly. “The initial stress has gone about whether people would come, whether our ideas have hit the mark… And our food is a nice representation of what we want to do. representation of what we want to do.”

“Nice” might be an understatement. With a vegetable focus in summer and more fish and game towards the cooler months, an autumn menu at Le Doyenné looks something like this: seated on restored vintage Thonet chairs (the original Bentwoods), we start with fat little round boudin noir (blood sausage) buns from estate-raised pigs, followed by generously sliced cured pork cheek lying on wedges of onion tart. Raw shrimp from South West France comes rolled with seaweed in a nasturtium leaf – sea-sweet with a bite. And then, a shiny plate of blindingly fresh baby vegetables – pink-bled watermelon radishes, teensy yellow carrots, gleaming slivers of fennel and endive, each adorned with an individual dressing – with herby, jammy, gingery, crunchy leek and herb parcels (known as barbajuan) in the middle.

And oh! The bread on the side – the house-baked pain de campagne, country- style, with salty, just-churned butter.

The sheer squeaky, juicy simplicity of the next dish is hard to beat. I’m still dreaming of it. A pile of yellow, white, green, mauve and orange vegetable straws – straight- from-the-soil carrots, zucchini, radishes and more – heaped on a vintage, gold-rimmed plate, dressed with lime and clementine vinegar, with a hint of ginger and chilli.

James Henry was born in Canberra, did his time in some great Australian restaurants (think Raes on Wategos, Fins and Cumulus Inc.) then headed to Paris, joining the burgeoning bistronomy movement around casual, contemporary fine dining. His restaurant Bones in the uber-cool 11th arrondissement paid homage to nose-to-tail meats. After it closed, he spent time with two excellent British-French bakers at the brilliant Ten Belles bakery-cafe in Paris. Fellow Aussie and Cumulus Inc. alumnus Kelly (from Eumundi on the Sunshine Coast) had also done his time in the French restaurant world (with James at Au Passage, for example), and more recently, at the Australian Embassy in Paris.

The Le Doyenné project all began in 2018, when Henry and Kelly were persuaded by the chateau’s current owners – the Mortemart family – to partner in a country restaurant.

“At first we said, ‘Thanks but no thanks’,” Henry confesses. “We knew nothing about farming and hotels. But then, well, it was an opportunity to change how we were cooking.” And so it happened.

Soon they were supplementing existing orchards with newer trees, planting heirloom vegetables, learning the principles of rotational cropping and regenerative farming and supplying produce boxes to Parisian restaurants. During Covid lockdowns, they baked and sold bread to locals.

All along there was serious renovating to be done. “It was a shell!” Henry says. “It took ages with permissions, and everything had to be worked on.”

Accommodation is increasingly part of any visit. “The whole experience is built around the rooms. People coming for dinner, they have a nice place to stay. It’s a concentrated experience, really nice… Well, so far no one’s wanted to leave, so that’s good,” Henry says, poker-faced.

More renovations lie ahead – a former gardener’s cottage is due to become a place for groups or families to stay. Henry and Kelly both live nearby; Henry with his wife and young son on a former wheat farm they’re trying to convert to organic. The light industrial Essonne area south of Paris, where they’re located, is the capital’s former wheat belt. Kelly is focusing on improving and expanding farming practices and raising the cutest pigs in an adjacent forest area.

And back to the table. Buttery scallops wallow with girolle mushrooms, pigeon arrives with a chard parcel, glazed carrots on the side… A platter of cheese follows, in true French tradition. And there are fine, nature-focused wines: a Côtes du Jura chardonnay (Les Pieds sur Terre, smoky and minerally), for example. Oh, and a splash of Bera Moscato d’Asti arrives with dessert. It’s a truly beautiful meal. We visit the gardens, greenhouse and a quirky leaf-filled grotto afterwards, and rejoice in all that is growing.

“We’re living what we say we are doing,” Henry says. “We’re making it happen. But we will keep implementing little changes and improve – waste management and composting, closing the loop a bit more. It’s nice that people are appreciating it. But there’s still so much to achieve.”