La Maison des Bois

“We aim to be completely self-sufficient in the very near future. Ninety-nine percent of the foods used in our kitchen are wild or produced on the premises. This is our way of demonstrating what we believe should be the cooking of the future. Our motto is written on a stone building at the hotel: 'The are of living with nature, and eating better to live better'.“

Frog’s legs with wild herb mayonnaise.

“I am not a cook, I’m a peasant“, says Chef Marc Veyrat, who reinvented the terroir (specific recipes made with local produce) of his native Savoy and won global acclaim for his pure and very personal Alpine cooking. “My grandparents had a farm here“, says the chef of the tiny Savoyard village of Manigold where he opened a hotel and restaurant two years ago with the desire to recreate and share his idyllic childhood. “When I was little, we gathered vegetables from the garden, pick wild blueberries and mushrooms, and juniper berries. In the autumn, we made cider with apples from the orchard. We made our butter and our cheeses. My grandmother made tarts with wild fruits, and my grandfather baked bread in the oven. It was an ideal and autonomous little world, without the use of any pesticides...all of my life I wanted to come back here”.