Le Doyenné at Brae

Chef and co-owner of Brae, Dan Hunter, is excited to invite you to a not-to-be-missed Festival highlight as he welcomes to his celebrated destination-restaurant fellow travellers James Henry and Shaun Kelly of Le Doyenné.

Le Doyenné is a restaurant, guesthouse, and farm set within the historical grounds of the Château de Saint-Vrain, in the village of Saint-Vrain, 40 kilometres south of central Paris. The Château was once the country retreat of the Countess du Barry and Borghese family, and has been the home of the Mortemart family for more than two centuries. Le Doyenné sits on the estate’s former stables where the French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle and Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely created their monumental works in the 1970s.

Chefs and owners James Henry and Shaun Kelly, together with the Mortemart family, have lovingly restored and converted Le Doyenné – the Mortemart family’s name for the centuries-old barn – into a restaurant and guesthouse. They called upon the expertise of local artisans to preserve the integrity of this classified historic site, re-imagining it as the French farmhouse of their dreams.

“In the potager, regenerative agricultural practices that have nurtured the land for generations are being revived to grow heirloom vegetables which form the foundation of our culinary offerings,” says Henry.

James Henry was born in Australia and worked for Andrew McConnell in Melbourne before making his way to Paris, where he opened Au Passage and Bones, two key names in the world of bistronomy, before devoting his attention to Le Doyenné.

Good Food described it as “the one restaurant we would travel across the world just to eat at again”, while Vogue praised its “true taste of French terroir”.

This is a meeting of two remarkable regenerative agriculture projects, a celebration of fine organic produce and the work of two chefs of international repute – don’t miss it.