La Bastide de Moustiers

Alain Ducasse bought this old house in the hills above Moustiers for himself, and then could not quite keep it to himself. What he made of it is an inn first, with a Michelin-starred kitchen second, which is the right order. La Bastide stands a little apart from the village, on the Quinson road, inside four hectares of park planted with olives, cypress and plane trees. Thirteen rooms, no more, each named rather than numbered and kept in the plain Provencal register of white linen, old shutters and worn terracotta. There is a heated pool below the terrace and a great deal of birdsong. Nothing here strains to impress you, which is its own kind of luxury.

The table

The kitchen is the reason to book. Valentin Fuchs cooks a short, seasonal Provencal menu that turns on what the potager and the local growers can give him that week, and the Michelin Guide has recognised both the cooking and the sourcing, with a star and a green star. Lunch on the terrace, under the planes with the valley dropping away below, is the version most people remember. The food is not elaborate. It is precise and generous, rooted in one place, which is the harder thing to pull off.

Why it's in VANE

Ducasse keeps grander addresses, but this is the one that reads like a home. It is small and personal, and it treats the garden, the long lunch and the slow afternoon as the point rather than the trimmings. Moustiers itself is one of France's prettiest villages, a faience town with a gilt star slung on a chain between two cliffs, and the Verdon gorge and the hard blue of Lac de Sainte-Croix are a short drive on. We would book a room over the park, take lunch outside and let the pace of the house set our own. Come in late spring or early autumn, when the dining room moves out of doors.