Australian chefs in France win Le Fooding Best Restaurant of 2023

Five years ago, two Australian chefs moved from Paris to the countryside of France to establish a restaurant closer to the produce. In November 2022, they won the ‘Best Restaurant of 2023’ award.

Australians James Edward Henry and Shaun Barney Kelly, the 38 and 39-year-old owners of Le Doyenne in the small town of Saint-Vrain (in the Essonne department), 40 kilometres from Paris, were praised for their atypical restaurant, voted ‘Best Restaurant of 2023’ by Le Fooding, a print and digital guide to hotels and restaurants.

The restaurant Le Doyenne is located in a park that was once a zoo and the residence of the Comptesse du Barry. It is located in the heart of agriculture-rick Essonne where the two chefs produce their own fruit and vegetables, and raise pigs and chickens.

The stars of French 'bistronomy' hired local staff and people from Canada, Switzerland, and Israel. The restaurant has a large glass ceiling space in what was previously French artist Niki de Saint Phalle's studio. Redesigned by Gigue studio, it has farm tables, a solid wood bar, and vintage half-moon banquette seating.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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