Rue de Wissembourg, Bas-Rhin
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Coaching inns were built to solve a problem that every gourmet still knows. After eating well and drinking better, a traveller has no business going any further that night. When the Cheval Blanc opened as a post house on the road to Wissembourg, the answer was a bed upstairs and a fresh horse at first light. These days nobody arrives on horseback. Everything else about the arrangement has barely changed.
Lembach is a flower-decked village on the river Sauer, deep in the wooded north of Alsace and a few kilometres short of the German border. For decades the Mischler family made its old post house one of the great tables of the region, and a young cook called Pascal Bastian learned his trade in their kitchen. He went off to cook in Saint-Émilion and beyond, and in 2008 he came back with his wife, Carole, to take over the house where he had started. Apprentices rarely end up holding the keys.
The bedrooms followed the kitchen, as they should in a house like this. Some sit in the old post house and keep its classic character, while the newer ones are larger and plainly modern. All of them come with proper bathrooms, which is more than any stagecoach passenger could have hoped for. Downstairs, a spa built around an indoor pool serves as the modern version of the stable.
Dinner takes place under a high coffered ceiling, with the kitchen at work behind a glass screen and Carole's team moving through the room with quiet speed. Pascal cooks somewhere between classicism and invention, with a south-western accent picked up on his travels. The venison is local, from the forests all around, and morels stuffed and served in a deep meat reduction have become a signature of the house.
The house gives itself away at dessert. France's most famous pastry ring, the Paris-Brest, was named after a bicycle race between two cities. Here it appears as the Paris-Lembach, with the map quietly redrawn so that the road out of Paris ends in a village in northern Alsace. So does the evening. Nobody needs to ask who is driving, because the journey home is one flight of stairs.
A day out from here goes either up or down. Up means Fleckenstein, a castle half carved into a sandstone rock above the forest. Down means the Four-à-Chaux, a fort of the Maginot Line dug thirty metres into the hill above the village, where the temperature stays at thirteen degrees all year round. Either way, the dining room is warmer. The restaurant closes early in the week, so stays towards the weekend are the safer bet.
The Cheval Blanc is made for gourmets who are in no hurry to get home. Nightlife in Lembach consists largely of the dining room. Two hundred years ago, a traveller stopping here needed a fresh horse to get back on the road. Today's guests mostly need a reason to stay another night, and the kitchen tends to supply one.
First job
Pascal Bastian started at the Cheval Blanc as a kitchen commis under Fernand Mischler, from 1996 to 1998, and came back in 2008 when Mischler was looking for a successor.
Dinner is served under high coffered ceilings, beside a large old fireplace, with coloured stained-glass windows letting in the daylight. The furniture is newer than the room: round tables on pale oak legs, light cloths, a fine chandelier and a few blown-glass storks on each table. A private salon off the restaurant takes groups and family celebrations.
In the old post house the structure stays in view: heavy exposed beams, sometimes used to divide the room into two areas, and stretches of bare stone. The fittings are recent, with a large walk-in shower, air conditioning and a coffee machine. Some rooms have a sitting area and some sleep up to four; one room in this building is adapted for reduced mobility.
In spring 2019 six rooms opened in the Maison Alsacienne, an Alsatian house joined to the inn. They are plainer than the rooms of the old building, filled with light and finished mostly in pale wood, with the same equipment. One of them is adapted for guests with reduced mobility. When booking, it is worth saying which of the two buildings is preferred.
The spa opened in 2015 in a separate building in the gardens, its large windows turning the heated indoor pool towards the outside. A whirlpool with a swan-neck jet for the neck and shoulders, sauna, sanarium, hammam and a sensory shower surround it, with a relaxation room and a tea corner. Hotel guests use it at no extra charge.
At a glance
Where
4 Rue de Wissembourg, 67510 Lembach, Bas-Rhin, in the centre of the village and in the Northern Vosges Regional Nature Park. Wissembourg 14 km, Haguenau 24 km, Karlsruhe 54 km, Strasbourg about 60 km. Stations: Soultz-sous-Forêts 16 km, Niederbronn-les-Bains 18 km, Haguenau 24 km, Strasbourg TGV 58 km. Airports: Baden-Baden 53 km, Strasbourg-Entzheim 73 km
Why this one
The rooms are upstairs from the table.
400 m², with a heated indoor pool.
Old beams or pale wood.
The Edit Notes
The restaurant is closed all day on Monday and Tuesday and at lunch on Wednesday, and it also takes one Sunday a month off, on dates set in its own calendar. A two-night stay from Sunday to Tuesday can therefore end up with no dinner in the house at all. Thursday to Saturday nights are the safe ones, and Wednesday evening works for a mid-week break. Check the Sunday calendar before booking, and reserve the table along with the room.
The rooms are split between the main building, the old post house with its exposed beams and stone, and the Maison Alsacienne, an annexe whose six rooms were fitted out in spring 2019 in pale wood and plain lines. The two feel quite different, so the building is worth stating when booking. For a family of four, ask for one of the rooms that sleep four; for a step-free stay, each building has one adapted room.
The suites add a balcony looking over the hotel and its surroundings, a balneotherapy bath and more space, and they are the only category the hotel lists with a balcony. The ordinary rooms list a large walk-in shower and no bath, which matters for anyone who wants a soak after a day walking in the Northern Vosges. The spa is the alternative: its heated indoor pool and whirlpool are included for every hotel guest, whatever the room.
On the à la carte menu the desserts, the Paris-Lembach among them, are to be ordered at the beginning of the meal, not after the main course, so the choice has to be made with the starters. The tasting menu called Epicure is served to the whole table only, so a group has to agree on it together. The kitchen sources its venison from local hunting around Lembach, which makes autumn and winter the natural season for game.
The price question
The money buys a room a staircase away from a serious gastronomic table, in a village with little else to do after dark, and a spa that would justify a stop on its own. It does not buy a choice of restaurants: there is one kitchen, and it rests early in the week. The fair comparison is a dinner here followed by a drive back to Strasbourg, about an hour each way.
Book it for one or two nights between Wednesday and Saturday, built around dinner, with a morning at Fleckenstein or the Four-à-Chaux fort before leaving. A traveller who wants a different restaurant each evening, or a stay that starts on a Monday, is better placed elsewhere.
Villa René Lalique, Wingen-sur-Moder
René Lalique's 1920 villa in the Northern Vosges, a hotel since 2015 with six suites named after Lalique designs and a restaurant in a glass pavilion by Mario Botta; the Lalique museum is 2 km away.
Le Chambard, Kaysersberg
In the wine village of Kaysersberg, on the Alsace wine route, a family-run hotel of 33 rooms with a gastronomic restaurant, La Table, a winstub and a spa.
The Extra Edit
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