Le Corot – a menu written in the names of its own villages

Fifteen minutes from central Paris, on the edge of the two ponds that the painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot filled nearly 250 canvases with, Le Corot occupies the old hunting-lodge wing of the Relais & Châteaux hotel Les Étangs de Corot in Ville-d'Avray. It holds Two MICHELIN Stars, a distinction awarded in March 2026 and, that year, the only one of its kind in the Hauts-de-Seine department. The promotion came twelve years after chef Rémi Chambard took the kitchen and won the restaurant's first star in 2014. A native of Charente-Maritime shaped early by a grandmother who farmed, Chambard builds his cooking almost entirely from the Île-de-France: mushrooms foraged near Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, saffron grown in Thoiry, cress from Méréville, chocolate worked in Choisy-le-Roi. The dining room, rebuilt in white oak and designer light fittings around an open kitchen, still carries reproductions of Corot's own paintings on its walls, a quiet nod to the view just beyond the terrace.

01The room and the setting

Le Corot sits in a former pavillon de chasse, a hunting lodge whose rotonde dining room is now, as one visiting food writer put it, a contemporary tribute to its own past: the antler trophies are gone, replaced by life-size reproductions of Corot's canvases of the ponds outside. A full renovation stripped the dark, trophy-hung decor in favour of white and wood, designer lighting and a Japanese-inflected restraint, built around an open kitchen where guests can watch Chambard's brigade work and a cellar substantial enough to be a destination in itself.

For private lunches away from the main room, the hotel also keeps the Chopin-Debussy salon, with its own large terrace looking straight over the water. The building belongs to Les Étangs de Corot, a 42-room Relais & Châteaux hotel first reopened by Alice and Jérôme Tourbier, of the family behind Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte and the Caudalie spa brand, and since October 2019 run by the Beautiful Life Hotels group, which carried out a full restoration completed in 2022.

02The chef

Rémi Chambard trained at the lycée hôtelier in La Rochelle and worked between Bordeaux and the Mediterranean before arriving at Les Étangs de Corot, where he took charge of the gastronomic kitchen in October 2011. The restaurant reopened under his direction in February 2014 after two years of work, and won its first MICHELIN Star the same year — a star he then held, and built on, for twelve consecutive years before the second arrived in March 2026, one of only seven new two-star promotions in France that year. Chambard has described his cooking as "cuisine champêtre", a style built on tracing every ingredient back to a named grower, forager, fisherman or vigneron within sight of the hotel's own forest and ponds.

Insider tip

Closed Monday and Tuesday; three fixed tasting menus only, booking recommended well ahead.

Pastry chef Baptiste Vial joined the team in March 2025 and was named a MICHELIN Guide "Passion Dessert" winner in 2026, recognised for desserts such as Nanterre, a composition of brioche, cereal and sourdough leaven that keeps faith with the kitchen's Île-de-France brief even at the sweet end of the meal.

03The cooking

The carte itself reads as a map: every course carries the name of the Paris-region village that produced its key ingredient, from Montmorency, historically famous for its sour cherries, to Crécy-la-Chapelle, lending its name to the carrot. Chambard has revived near-forgotten Île-de-France varieties for his kitchen, replanting Belleville sorrel and bringing back the "monstrueux de Viroflay" spinach, while reworking old regional dishes — the classic petit pois à la Clamart recast, for instance, as an asparagus dish drawing on growers in Seine-et-Marne. The effect, according to one regional food guide, is a cuisine that is markedly identitaire: three fixed menus, each named for a walk through this landscape, rather than loose à la carte choice.

04What to order

On the current menus, courses are built around produce-led pairings: Ville-d'Avray brings wild mushrooms with aubergine and agastache; Meudon sets trout against fir and oxalis; Thoiry pairs pike-perch with green beans and its own saffron; Crécy-la-Chapelle serves pigeon with Paris carrot and tagetes; Fontenay-Trésigny lobster arrives with spinach and lemon balm; Méréville plates veal sweetbread with artichoke and watercress. On the sweet side, Montmorency closes with cherry, elderflower and lemon, Ozouer-le-Voulgis with vanilla, grilled rice and raw cream, and Morainvilliers with strawberry, rhubarb and shiso. The kitchen states on its own menu, read in October 2026, that all its meat is sourced in France.

05Wine and drinks

The cellar, large enough to be shown off as part of the dining experience, runs from established Bordeaux and Burgundy names to smaller regional growers; the MICHELIN Guide notes the list as a particular strength of the address. True to the house's local obsession, one white poured at the table comes from the Association du Clos du Pas Saint-Maurice, an urban vineyard a few kilometres away in Suresnes — about as local as a wine list gets this close to Paris.

06When to go and booking

Le Corot is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, serving lunch from 12.30pm to 2pm and dinner from 7.30pm to 9.30pm, with around 45 covers in the dining room. In October 2026 the house lists three fixed menus only — Autour des Étangs for four courses (served Wednesday and Thursday dinner, and Friday lunch), La Promenade for six, and La Grande Balade for eight — alongside a children's menu and an Île-de-France cheese selection. From May to September, Friday evenings bring La Guinguette des Étangs, a livelier waterside turn with music and cocktails on the hotel's lakeside terrace, a short walk from the restaurant's own quieter dining room.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.