Gourmet Travel Reviews - France Gourmet Restaurants

Georges Blanc Restaurant, Vonnas, France

The village of Vonnas, France (pop. 2,381) where the restaurant-hotel Georges Blanc is found, is just south of Dijon in the Bresse plain that abuts the eastern edge of the great Burgundian domains of Beaujolais, Chablis, Beaune and Macon. The farms here are famous for the toothsome, blue-legged poulet de Bresse; grain and milk-fed chickens bred and raised like Kentucky thoroughbreds and about as expensive.

Chef Georges Blanc at Georges Blanc Restaurant in Vonnas France Photo © Christine Collie

Vonnas is scrubbed, swept and alive with colour, every square inch not devoted to some other purpose having been been planted with flowers. And the village square is dominated on three sides by the properties that make up the George Blanc establishment: the half-timbered brick hotel and restaurant (32 rooms, six apartments); the Ancienne Auberge, a reproduction of the original Blanc family restaurant featuring a modestly-priced menu; and the store, which sells preserves and charcuterie, fine china and flatware, cooking utensils, wine and gifts.

Chef Georges Blanc spends a great deal of money each year to gild the charm of Vonnas; if you're looking for a typical Burgundian farm village, look elsewhere - Vonnas is all about Georges Blanc and Georges Blanc is all about creating the perfect climate for the appreciation of what strives to be France's best cuisine.

When Christine and I visited, the maestro reported with characteristic modesty that thanks to a purchase just made, he now owns all of the properties facing onto the town square.

"It was necessary...we would not want someone to open a pizza parlour, for example. It would spoil the atmosphere," he explained apologetically.

All this is ancillary to the food, which is the main event, and which has been the source of the Blanc family fame and fortune for generations. Jean-Louis Blanc and his wife opened the first restaurant and hotel at the fairgrounds in Vonnas in 1872, where they served hearty county cooking to poultry dealers who appeared each Thursday for the market. By the time their son Adolph took over the business in 1902 it had attained a modicum of fame.

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