Gastronomy: The Bastide of Capelongue in Bonnieux

In the heart of the Luberon, a delightful garden, a large table in a charming hotel. A treat for the pupils and the taste buds.
 

It is a land of miracles swept by the warm wind. A garden suspended out of time which dominates the massif of the Luberon. A panoramic terrace floating in an ocean of wild mountains that bar the horizon. Here you are in Bonnieux, nursery set in the heart of the golden triangle of the Luberon. Perched 500 meters on this rocky peak of Vaucluse at the pace of little Mont-Saint-Michel, the Bastide de Capelongue comfortably extends its roots on the six hectares of the plateau of Claparèdes, include: stones, Provençal. This paradise was once the temple of the bories, houses of dry stones shaped by the peasants and the shepherds, was acquired by Claude Loubet in the early 1990s. Then his son, Édouard, who made 2 Michelin stars shine at the table of the Moulin de Lourmarin, a few kilometers from here, succeeded his mother to take back with his wife, Isabelle, the torch in 2005.


Gominated hair, stained dyed, draped in its flax blouse of an immaculate white with raised collar, this Savoyard pure juice seems straight out of a film by Marcel Pagnol. Over time, Édouard Loubet has shaped the family home in the purest tradition of the bastides of Provence. Its charming house has now become a prestigious Relais-Châteaux hotel with its 17 rooms and their dovecote suite all named after a famous character of Jean Giono and Alphonse Daudet: Panturle, Siméon, Tartarin, Maître Cornille ...


Open their windows to admire Mount Ventoux in the distance. Abandon yourself to the song of the cicadas. Walk the immense landscaped park with works by renowned artists. Sip an ice cream at the edge of the fountain. Let yourself be carried away by the confusing perfumes of the five typical herbs of Provence: thyme, sage, rosemary, savory and marjoram. Not to mention lavender. Then go down to the pool in the form of a "rectangular octagonal trapezoid". Stay in the shade of olive trees, umbrella pines, cedars and cypresses. Get drunk with the fragrances of the maquis. An impressive rainbow of colors unfolds over the valley.
Expect then to cross on the way Édouard Loubet picking in his kitchen garden full of several varieties of tomatoes, artichokes, hearts of sunflower ... Serpolet in mouth, you will see the chef aéoléolé of 2 Michelin stars and elected chef de l ' year in 2011 by the Gault and Millau to speed up to the furnaces the basket filled with treasures to play his score at dinner. That of a maestro who rejoices "not to be in fashion" and whose signature mixes the classicism with the contemporary, astonishes by the tastes, surprises by the marriages.
Ode of Provence

"The pictures of great masters cling to a wall to judge themselves in time; the kitchen is judging itself in immediacy, it is the school of instant and instinct, "confides the toque of 44 years who has rolled his apron at Alain Chapel in Mionnay and Marc Veyrat in Veyrier-du-Lac. Its plates are a tribute to the garrigue, their titles of sweet poems giving pride of place to essences: summer truffle aestivum in crust raised with a coulis of corn with melissa, pepper popcorn and leaf of pimprenelle; wolf of line to unilateral, light infusion with sage and crisps of orange; pigeon of the Alpilles seized with the spices of the fields, liver in tartelette raised with the whey of rocket of the Ventoux; soufflé with cedar crests of the upper Luberon, ice with cloves, beggar crunching. An ode to Provence for an Édouard Loubet more than ever at the top of the Luberon.

Bastide of Capelongue, the Claparèdes, path of the Cabanes, Bonnieux (Vaucluse), 04 90 75 89 78, www.capelongue.com.

BY THIBAUT DANANCHER

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