Georges Blanc Parc & Spa, Vonnas

Vonnas counts barely three thousand inhabitants, yet it has its own motorway exit. The road through the Bresse was long for the diners who drove from all over France to eat at Georges Blanc's table, so the chef, a local councillor as well, pushed until the village got one. Past the exit lies a picturesque village of flowered façades, and it slowly dawns on a visitor that most of the handsome old houses belong to the same family. Checking in here means crossing the border of someone's kingdom.

Its ruler is Georges Blanc, less a chef than the sheriff of a small Western town who also owns the saloon and most of Main Street. His grandmother Élisa made the family inn famous for Bresse chicken in cream, and he turned it into one of the great tables of France before restoring the village around it, house by house. Inside, the clock still reads the golden age of French gastronomy, when food lovers crossed the country from one grand dining room to the next.

A walk before lunch shows how the kingdom works. The bakery, pastry shop, grocery and wine shop around the corner all belong to the house, and so does Les Saules, the simpler hotel a few doors down. Around the square nearly everyone is a guest or on the payroll, and staff hurry between buildings. Vonnas is a village run as one house, and for a weekend its guests become its villagers.

On arrival a valet parks the car, and nothing in the kingdom needs it again. The forty-two rooms mix Burgundy stone floors and Bresse wood, and some show their age. The ones worth requesting have balconies over the Veyle, while families do best in the two-level duplex suites, some with their own fireplace. Behind the hotel, a park lit up at night stretches to the spa, whose indoor pool with massage jets is quietest early in the day.

The kingdom has two tables. The exit was built for crowds, and they still come: the grand restaurant seats around a hundred in six rooms, and on a full night it runs like a machine, serving haute cuisine on an almost industrial scale. The rooms are busy and loud, closer to a lively brasserie than a hushed temple, and the evening is remembered as much for the spectacle as for the classic cooking. L'Ancienne Auberge, a café of around 1900 rebuilt as it was, is more relaxed, with spit-roast chicken and frogs in parsley and garlic. On many evenings the old ruler still tours the tables in both, a monarch receiving his subjects.

Not everyone will love the time warp, or the crowds. On busy weekends the breakfast room gets noisy, and after dinner the square falls silent. Vonnas belongs first to food lovers curious about how France used to eat, ideally for two nights, one for each table. In winter that means a weekend by the log fire in the garden room, an hour from Lyon or Geneva. In summer it opens onto the river terrace, and with a play area of their own, children come too.

Most kingdoms guard their borders. This one built its own border crossing to let the diners in, and just past the exit the clock still runs several decades slow.