La Maison des Bois

A family inn since 1926

The thatched roof sets the frame at La Maison des Bois in Sainte-Apolline, Plaisir, where the Lavergne family has kept an inn since 1926. Laurent Lavergne, chef and owner, holds the title Maître Cuisinier de France, and the cooking stays inside classical French bourgeois practice rather than reaching past it. His wife Jenny works the room, opening the door on arrival and returning at the end of the meal, so the house reads as one operation rather than two departments.

Continuity is the working method. Virginia creeper still climbs the front of the inn, old faience plates from the early years remain in the room, and the restorations have been kept measured enough that the building never feels restaged. What changes is the carte, which follows the market through game, fish and seasonal produce, held to freshness, quality and generosity.

A carte held to the market

The kitchen works in a traditional French gastronomique register, with the discipline of bourgeois cooking rather than the looseness of a large repertory. The carte turns on market produce, game, fish, and the sauces that give such cooking its weight. Lobster stew, served as navarin de homard, is the house signature; foie gras terrine, profiteroles, and feuilleté poire hold the same confidence in known forms. Nothing here needs to shout if the stock, the pastry, and the cooking of the fish are exact.

The list of dishes is deliberately short, with fixed-price menus beside the carte, including a lunch at 47 euros. Sauce work carries much of the weight: the navarin de homard is judged on its sauce, sautéed langoustines arrive with a crusted exterior and a subtly spiced dipping sauce, and the wild fish is cooked without margin. Pastry closes in the same register, with La Tarte Feuilletée, profiteroles sent out on a warm plate with chocolate sauce, and petits fours at the end. The beverage program stays close to wine, with a curated list and regional French bottles by the glass.

The old inn as station

The room keeps the pace of a country restaurant rather than a city dining room. Wood panels, a fireplace, garden views, and the thatched roof give the work a physical frame; Virginia creeper climbs the outside of the inn, and the terrace sits beneath an old plane tree. The setting matters because it does not flatten the craft into a performance. It lets the hands do their work in a place that already has grain.

At the pass, the formal service style meets a warmer house rhythm. The dining format allows both à la carte and prix fixe choices, and private dining is arranged for groups from ten people, but the prose of the room is not transactional. Plates move from kitchen to table with the calm of a place used to long meals, and the counterpoint is clear: lobster, foie gras, pastry, wine, wood, fire. The craft has objects to hold it.

What remains in the house

The restaurant has awards from the current year and the previous year. More useful than the count is where the work continues to gather: in a house first established in 1926, under a thatched roof, with a kitchen still returning to navarin de homard.