Château Richeux – the Roellinger villa behind three Michelin stars

Above the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, Château Richeux is a 1920s villa that has grown into the heart of the Maisons de Bricourt, where Breton hospitality is expressed with rare sincerity, the small constellation of houses and tables the Roellinger family has built around Cancale in Brittany. Overlooking the bay, this large 1920s villa is home to the twelve-room Relais & Châteaux hotel, as well as Hugo Roellinger's Michelin-starred restaurant, Le Coquillage. Awarded three Michelin stars in 2025 and a green star in 2020, Hugo Roellinger was named Chef of the Year 2025 by Gault & Millau, continuing the work his father Olivier began a few miles away in Cancale. Reached down a lane off the road toward Mont-Saint-Michel, the house stands behind walls of blond stone and gardens turned toward the sea, giving it one of the finest views in Brittany, and it still feels less like a hotel than a family home that happens to contain one of France's most closely watched dining rooms.

01The house

Château Richeux was built by the Saint-Malo architect Yves Hémar for a certain Madame Shaki around 1925, a notable example of the renewal of elite seaside residences after the First World War. Hémar, responsible for several of the region's emblematic houses, mixed architectural influences in the design, and a remarkable mosaic signed by Odorico can still be seen inside today.

The house fell gradually into ruin after the war before being bought by the Roellinger family in 1990, first as a family residence and only some years later turned into a guesthouse. Its ground floor, once the simple bistro Olivier Roellinger ran alongside his own establishment, now houses Le Coquillage, the three-starred table his son Hugo runs today.

02Rooms and suites

Eleven spacious rooms with bay views and two apartments make up this singular and refined sanctuary, twelve keys in all. They were recently renovated under the impetus of Hugo Roellinger and his wife Mathilde, who oversees the whole of Maisons de Bricourt and its restaurants, and no two rooms are alike.

Insider tip

Book Le Coquillage well ahead; reflexology for the Bains Celtiques must be arranged on arrival day.

Some are compact, cocoon-like retreats; others open into generous apartments where a freestanding bath sits in the middle of the room, or a bathroom has been built as its own volume within the space. One room, Cardamome, has its own private terrace facing the water. Before dinner, guests gather in the Jane salon, named for the house's historic matriarch, or in the newer Moka room, built around a record player and board games, beside a cabinet of curiosities where Hugo Roellinger displays the shell collection he began as a child.

03Where to eat

Le Coquillage is the reason many guests first find their way to Saint-Méloir-des-Ondes. Awarded a green star in 2020 and three stars in the Michelin Guide in 2025, Hugo Roellinger was also named Chef of the Year 2025 by Gault & Millau, cementing a kitchen built entirely on what the bay and the kitchen garden provide.

The menu leaves meat aside altogether, turning instead on shellfish, seaweed and the spices that have carried the Roellinger name for two generations. In October 2026 two tasting menus were listed on the restaurant's own pages: 'By the Whims of the Wind and the Moon' at 290 euros and the shorter 'Under Cover of the Waves' at 230 euros, both excluding drinks, their courses carrying names such as Sea Flower, Lobster Stories and Laminaria Digitata. Bread for the table, and for the whole hotel, is baked in a wood-fired oven at the château's entrance, from organic flour milled from heirloom grain and left to rise slowly on natural leaven.

04Spa and wellbeing

The Bains Celtiques occupy the old farmhouse at Ferme du Vent, entered through a barn built around a three-hearth granite fireplace. Beyond it, covered and uncovered baths open onto the tide and sky, a dry-heat timber sauna and a steam-filled stone grotto completing the circuit. Access is deliberately limited to four guests at a time, and reflexology treatments are given by therapist Gwenn Libouban.

05The neighbourhood

Cancale, the oyster port that made Olivier Roellinger's name, lies about five kilometres away on the road toward Mont-Saint-Michel. The family's other house there, the clifftop Les Rimains, sits above the oyster beds at the start of a coastal footpath known locally as the lovers' trail, leading one way to the port of Cancale and the other to the cliffs of Pointe du Groin.

Behind the château itself, a walled Celtic kitchen garden supplies the herbs for Le Coquillage, while an orchard of heirloom apple trees, pollinated by the estate's own bees, produces the juice served at breakfast. Sheep, cows and donkeys graze the same seven hectares of farmland, a working domain rather than a decorative backdrop.

06Making the most of a stay

Le Coquillage serves lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday; with so few covers for a three-starred table, booking well ahead is essential. Reflexology sessions that unlock the Bains Celtiques can only be arranged on the day of arrival, and access to the baths themselves is never guaranteed, so flexible guests fare best.

For an easier lunch, the family's own Bistrot de Cancale looks out over the Atlantic a short drive away, and the pâtisserie Grain de Vanille and the Épices Roellinger spice shop in Cancale make a pleasant detour before walking back along the shore to Richeux.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.