THE JOURNAL

La Bastide de Moustiers, Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. Photograph courtesy of La Bastide de Moustiers
Where to fill your belly and roll into bed – all under one roof.
A deep comfort suffuses body and mind. Dinner is finished, you are sated and possibly a little bit tipsy. (Wine pairing? Go on, then.) And of course, now you are in a bind. You need quick and easy transport to bed, which is fine when you are in the city, but more problematic if you are in far-off Provence or deepest Devon. There is a solution, though. Book a restaurant with rooms, and you can eat your fill, drink with abandon and toddle upstairs to the king-size for some sugar-coated dreams.
Some naysayers may point out that lots of hotels have perfectly serviceable restaurants, some perfectly superb, but all too often the hotel restaurant is the olive in the martini, a garnish to the main event. Because we know our readers value a good meal, we have searched the globe, from New Zealand to Uruguay, to bring you the places with the best of both worlds.
Restaurante Garzón, Uruguay

Left Bedroom at Hotel Garzon. Right zucchini salad. Photographs courtesy of Hotel Garzon
Netflix star chef Mr Francis Mallmann (if you haven’t seen his Chef’s Table, get streaming) pretty much single-handedly revived the once-thriving, since-down-on-its-luck hamlet of Garzón in eastern Uruguay, when he opened a restaurant with rooms there in 2005. Buenos Aires’ elite set up camp during the summer months in nearby José Ignacio. But they venture 30 minutes inland to Mr Mallmann’s to sample his open-fire cooking and Inca-inspired fare. Burning eucalyptus and quebracho logs, he creates traditional Argentinian and Uruguayan fish and meat dishes (such as rib-eye with chimichurri and domino potato). The rooms are traditional estancia style with views of the garden and pool, king-sized beds and fireplaces or wood burners in each room. Book in advance – it’s flaming hot.
What to order: rack of lamb with walnut gremolata, smashed sweet potato rescoldo and leaves
What to wear
The Pig at Combe, UK

The Pig at Combe. Photograph courtesy of The Pig
You reach The Pig via its mile-long drive, which begins in the village of Gittisham (described by Prince Charles as “a perfect English village”), with the 27-bedroom sandstone Tudor manor house flickering in and out of view. After passing meadows, woodland, Arab stallions in the fields and four cottages available for rent, you hit the gravel and standing before you is something out of a Ms Nancy Mitford novel. You enter the Elizabethan manor via the cocktail bar, an innovation we would like to see more of, and pass through to the dining room and the library (where tea and cake are served). The restaurant is a relaxed, wooden-floored assemblage of mismatched chairs and coloured glass. It serves fresh fish from the coast a few miles away and “the piggy bits” that all five Pig hotels have on their menu along with all that is fresh from the gardens. Rooms come in a vast array of shapes and sizes, as befits an old country house. All are spacious and many have a free-standing roll-top bath, perfect for wallowing in piggy-style.
What to order: whatever has just been picked from the garden
What to wear
Brae, Australia

Left Brae exterior. Photograph by Mr Trevor Mein. Courtesy of Brae. Right beef tendon and mountain pepper; iced oyster; first asparagus; chicken and truffle sandwich; salt and vinegar potato; burnt pretzel, treacle and pork; prawn, nasturtium, finger lime; turnip and brook trout roe; radish and fermented cream. Photograph courtesy of Brae
Brae is halfway between a restaurant and a luxurious commune. The 30-acre organic farm opened in 2013 with a mission to make cracking food and use “regenerative farming” methods to restore the land to its productive best. And restore it they have. The rolling acres boast vegetables, stone fruits, olives and nuts, and also feed the free-range chickens that roam the estate (and fill the menu). The menu changes depending on what is in season, allowing the chefs to cook without the deadening effect of refrigeration. Little wonder that Brae came in at number 65 on last year’s World’s Best Restaurant list, and that there is new book published by Phaidon – Brae: Recipes And Stories From The Restaurant. Hidden away in a raised garden, there are six suites with floor-to-ceiling windows, underfloor heating and a design scheme that looks like it has emerged blinking into the light from an Architectural Digest shoot. Think lightly treated wood and lots of slate-grey tones and those lamps you only find in blisteringly smart design stores.
What to order: whatever is fresh that day
What to wear
Lympstone Manor, UK

View from Lympstone Manor. Photograph courtesy of Lympstone Manor
Mr Michael Caines is one of Britain’s best chefs, and he has something of a liking for country houses. Lympstone, a Georgian manor house on the Devon coast, is the new flagship restaurant-hotel in his group, alongside Palé Hall in Wales and Kentisbury Grange on the edge of Exmoor (he also does the food for the Williams F1 team, but that’s another story). The hotel opened to some fanfare last month after a massive renovation that gave it three new dining rooms, a bar and an enviable wine cellar, where you can indeed taste the stock. The decor is modern but sympathetic to the building, which has terrace views over the Exe Estuary, perfect for a pre-prandial stiffener. The rooms are spread across the main house and a beautiful glass-fronted annexe, with gargantuan outdoor marble baths so you can have a soak as the sun goes down. The main event is the dining room, where Mr Caines works his considerable magic. This double-Michelin-starred chef is at the top of his game. Expect big flavours on the plate, an absence of modish foams and that warm, pleasant feeling you get when you have spent an evening eating like Mr Gérard Depardieu on a gastronomic bender.
What to order: braised turbot, River Exe mussels and cockles, with tomato and basil sauce
What to wear
La Bastide de Moustiers, France

Left Suite Bastidon. Right asparagus at La Bastide de Moustiers. Photographs by Mr Pierre Monetta. Courtesy of La Bastide de Moustiers
La Bastide, as it is invariably called, was originally bought by the French über-chef Mr Alain Ducasse as a hideaway for his family, and it is indeed quite difficult to find, being on the outskirts of the ancient, limestone-cliffed town of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, an hour-and-a-half from Nice. The view is superb – a vertigo-inducing gorge, endless green fields and extensive vegetable gardens, a swimming pool that’s open from May to October and, at the estate’s centre, in an ancient yellow-stone building, the restaurant, benignly presided over by manager Mr Jérôme Léonard. The menu changes with what’s in season and what’s available in the estate greenhouses. That said, it is never anything but pure, unadulterated Provençal – think white asparagus, bay leaves, capers and the catch brought in that day from the coast – and is available either as à la carte or as a tasting menu in the elegantly muted dining room with its battalion of precisely trained but unpretentious staff (they don’t have uniforms and they wear sneakers). There are 11 rooms and two suites, including a cute two-floor number in the old pigeon loft. Kitted out in locally made bed sheets, bathroom tiles and toiletries, it is a little hymn to Provence and one we’ll keep on singing.
What to order: carrot in the fireplace, green peas and sausage, lamb from La Pascalone
What to wear
Herdade da Malhadinha Nova, Portugal

Herdade da Malhadinha Nova, Alentejo, Portugal. Photograph courtesy of Herdade da Malhadinha Nova
The food at chef Mr Joachim Koerper’s restaurant in Alentejo is Portuguese down to the last chickpea in his game stew. For some, that would be a warning sign, Portuguese cooking not being universally garlanded with gastronomic praise around the world. But the world is wrong. The concentration is on seasonal flavours and updated Portuguese classics, such as partridge rice and Alentejano stew (hence the chickpeas). Most of the ingredients come from the 450-acre estate the hotel and restaurant sit on, or from the surrounding area. After dinner and the requisite wines from the restaurant’s vineyard, you might want to make use of one of the seven bedrooms and three suites, all of which are stocked with Bulgari products (yes, that type of place). There is also an infinity pool, library and free bikes to borrow so you can whizz around the grounds.
What to order: trilogy of cod with peas, peppers and organic olive oil
What to wear
Annandale, New Zealand

Left view from Scrubby Bay. Right ora king salmon with pickled radish and quinoa. Photographs courtesy of Annandale
If you are looking for a retreat, they don’t come more private than 4,000-acre Annandale Farm, which sits on the Banks Peninsula and looks out on the endless cobalt blue of the Pacific Ocean. Rather than rooms here, you get entire villas. And what villas they are. Clapboard homesteads built in 1880 sit cheek by jowl with cosy cottages and ultra-modern, glass-walled retreats. Little wonder the set-up has won several architectural prizes. At its heart is the gorgeous farmhouse, and this is a working farm as much as a culinary destination. The ethos is farm-to-table and they have quite a lot of farm to choose from – 7,000 sheep roam the land, 50 varieties of vegetables and herbs are grown and the Angus beef moo next to vast orchards. It is a locavore’s dream, and one of the best hotel-restaurants in the country.
What to order: Rangiora black lacquer duck leg with scallion rice pancake, banana lychee relish and chilli jam