Thomas Besnault, cook, and François Rieant, gardener, at Loire Valley Lodges

Located near Tours, in the heart of an immense 300-hectare private forest, Loire Valley Lodges first made a name for itself with its beautiful room-cabins perched among the trees. Now it's the restaurant that attracts visitors, headed by a young chef, Thomas Besnault, who has found in this magnificent estate the space to write his own cuisine. He joined the restaurant l'Ardent at the end of 2021, as executive chef of a menu designed by Gaëtan Évrard of L'Évidence in Montbazon, and quickly established himself as a chef in his own right. A few months later, he took charge of the menu, with dishes directly inspired by the kitchen garden that had already been laid out when the estate opened in 2020. The garden was created by François Rieant, who looks after it on a daily basis, working in close collaboration with the chef.

Gault&Millau: François, what is your background?

François Rieant: I was a chef for a while. Then I retrained to become a forestry technician. I looked for jobs in the forest, but didn't necessarily find them. I worked for a friend of Bertrand Frey [editor's note: owner of Loire Valley Lodges] and it was he who advised me to come here. That's how I came back to a hotel and restaurant business! The good thing is that I've been in the kitchen before! I know the problems, expectations and difficulties that can arise. I'm perhaps more sympathetic to them than most gardeners who've never set foot in a kitchen.

G&M: How did you go about designing this kitchen garden?

F. R.: At this location [Editor's note: right next to the house where the reception and restaurant are located], there was nothing but meadow. We designed a mandala garden, which is much nicer to walk around in. I have 5000 m2 of vegetable garden, plus a few beds in the restaurant's inner courtyard, with aromatic herbs, blackcurrants, redcurrants, raspberry bushes... I've planted fruit trees, apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, plum trees, fig trees, but not many peach or apricot trees because they're fragile. They're a bit young, so we haven't had any real production yet. That should happen this year. For aesthetic reasons, we didn't want to use greenhouses, so we stayed with open ground. Which is a problem, because some plants are much more at ease in greenhouses, like tomatoes for example. It doesn't take up water and you can extend the seasons a bit. But visually, I can well understand... The idea was also to put flowers in. There are lots of rosebushes and lavender plants to add color. And then on the fallow areas, I put flowering mixtures, because we also have bees. As we're in permaculture, I avoid aggressive treatments. And then, as soon as I pick the leeks, for example, I cut off all the heads and leave them where they are. I always try to give back to the earth as much as possible of what it has given us, so as not to exhaust it.

G&M: For you, Thomas, has having a vegetable garden nearby changed the way you cook?

Thomas Besnault: Not that much. Let's just say it doesn't change the personality of my cooking, but it is a source of inspiration. Every time I go to the vegetable garden, I get ideas. I see a beet next to a celery and I say to myself "let's put them together". All year round, I also serve a plate called "The Garden Game". I work it according to what we have. The only constant in this dish is douglas fir and honey. We dry the pine thorns, which have a little grapefruit flavor, and turn them into a powder, a spice for the juice.

There are a lot of aromatic herbs here - oregano, for example, which I wasn't used to using - as well as tarragon, which wasn't really my thing to begin with. We also worked with blackcurrant leaves and buds, which are impossible to obtain when you place orders.

G&M: How do you choose which varieties to grow?

F. R.: The advantage of having been a chef is that I know the recurrent needs, such as leeks, celery, cabbage or herbs... In summer, I grow tomatoes and in winter, squash.When Thomas arrived, he got involved and really started using the garden. We have real discussions about plants.

T. B.: We have regular updates, like a business plan! And then we go into the vegetable garden and taste. It's like spending every day with a grower! François is just as much a part of the restaurant team as those in the kitchen and dining room.

G&M: Are you looking for rare or ancient species?

F. R.: I do this a lot for tomatoes, working with the tomato conservatory at Château de la Bourdaisière, which has an incredible collection. Here, I've chosen around fifteen varieties. You could say I've made them a bit of a specialty. In the kitchen, they are used in carpaccio, gazpacho... And the extra production, the cooks manage to transform it.

T. B. Last year, we had at least ten varieties - that was huge! And what's more, it wasn't necessarily my specialty! But we did a tomato dish with a concentrated yellow tomato ketchup, a nice slice that we just burned over a flame, and a very concentrated carbonated juice too.

G&M: How do you manage the quantities you produce? Do you have shortages or surpluses?

T. B.: At the moment, I'd say we're at around 50% of the products we use coming from our vegetable garden, but there have been times when we're at 80% at the height of summer. It varies a lot. We're fortunate to have several offerings: the gourmet restaurant, the Finger Food menu and room service, where we propose salads made from baby greens and vegetables that we have in small quantities. At the start of each meal, we always serve a broth made from our own peelings, the ones we want to put to good use. We do a lot of drying for powders. We also make beet confit in smoked oil, sprinkled with beet powder to coat the palate and intensify the taste. I don't do lacto-fermentation yet, but it's being considered.

F. R.: Last year, we had too many butternut squash. The staff took some, but it wasn't enough to sell them. So we called the Red Cross, who took them. It was a great idea, rather than throwing them in the compost. I'll be doing less this year! On the other hand, there are some things for which I'll never be able to supply everything the kitchen needs. Strawberries, for example. I'd have to plant an entire field to satisfy the needs of the kitchen, which has to source them elsewhere. But I try to do my best to supply them.

G&M: Have you already experienced any failures in your plantations?

F. R.: The first year, it rained so much that all my tomatoes caught mildew: 250 plants lost in two days, which meant two weeks' work in the garbage can. The following year, it was the opposite! There wasn't much rain, and they had trouble growing. I had to rethink my irrigation system. I'd also planted wasabi, but hadn't really looked into how it was done. I found out later that it takes a lot of water to grow. So I put some in greenhouses. Well, I can't really call it a greenhouse... It's a corridor between two buildings, which allows me to do all my seedlings and some citrus fruit.

G&M: What's the special pleasure of this relationship between gardener and chef?

F. R.: It's hearing the chef say to me: your vegetables aren't necessarily the biggest or the most beautiful, but they taste great! It's extremely gratifying. Even if I'm not the one who grows the vegetables. It's the soil, the water and the sun.