Continental breakfast is served in the restaurant, a regal space with dark red palette, fabric-covered walls and an oil painting of an 18th-century general on horseback. Extras – eggs and the like – are ordered via a form that guests fill in and return to reception the evening before. A memorable highlight of any stay is a long and lazy summertime lunch at the celebrated Bar à Tomates (open noon to 5.30pm daily mid-April to late September), an enchanting guinguette in the grounds serving chateau-grown tomatoes: as gazpacho, tomato and mozzarella salad, in a roast tomato tart or as sweet pineapple and tomato sorbet, perhaps.
Tables idyllically overlook the dahlia garden. Soups, salads and tomato beer are also served year-round in the whitewashed tea room, in the former stables. Organic tomatoes and vegetables freshly harvested from the chateau potager feature heavily on the restaurant’s three-course menu (€33 [£28.50]; closed Sunday and Monday), available at lunch and dinner May to October.
Otherwise, a 10-minute drive to La Cave (lunch/dinner menus from €19/33 [£16.50/28.50]) rewards with creative regional cuisine served around a central open fireplace. The setting – a troglodyte (cave), cut into creamy tufa cliffs and lit with twinkling fairy lights – is as magnificent as the creative regional dishes such as hake with hazelnut, almond and pine kernel chutney or cinnamon-spiked pear and red wine tart.
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