In the lavishly restored Château des Tesnières, near Torcé, South African chef Chantel Dartnall has installed an ambitious project combining fine dining and charming hospitality – there are a handful of luxurious guestrooms upstairs. The decor combines Art Nouveau woodwork with pieces from South Africa to create a richly eclectic atmosphere. Featuring top-notch ingredients, the "Tabula Rasa" set menu, which revolves around vegetables and flowers, wins diners over with its visual poetry and the quality of its ingredients: finely crafted amuse-bouches (vegetable tartlets, a light root-vegetable mousse, or bouillon clair), courgette flan, pea soup, and pigeon cooked rare. The remarkable cellar counts some 25 000 bottles, including many South African and foreign wines.