Le Chambard Kaysersberg

At the Winstub du Chambard, the first thing anyone notices is the ceiling. Dozens of little fabric hearts hang from it on long threads, and every time the door opens they turn slowly, as if the room were taking a breath. Below them, it is an old-fashioned Alsatian stube through and through, all dark wood, close tables and a warm hum of voices. It would be charming even if the food were ordinary. It is anything but.

Le Chambard stands in the middle of Kaysersberg, a medieval wine town of half-timbered houses beneath a ruined castle, a few kilometres from Colmar. Olivier Nasti, a chef from Belfort with a passion for hunting, took it over in 2000; today he runs it with his wife Patricia, and their daughters work beside them. What began as a single inn has grown into a small gourmet quarter: thirty-three calm rooms in an eighteenth-century house, a spa looking out to the vineyards, two restaurants, a bakery and a chocolate shop, all within a few steps of one another.

The winstub is where Alsace is cooked straight. The menu sticks to regional specialities, choucroute with up to nine garnishes among them, and in the hunting season the game comes from the surrounding forests. It is hearty food made with a fine-dining precision, and locals book weeks ahead. Plenty of guests end up eating there more than once in a single stay, and very few regret it.

La Table d'Olivier Nasti is the reason many people travel here in the first place, and it is a different experience altogether. Dinner is closer to an intellectual journey than a feast. Nasti treats Alsace as both larder and memory, setting wild herbs from the Vosges beside the spoils of the hunt, and in autumn the venison is carved at the table. Every course comes with an idea attached, and the ideas linger long after the plates have gone.

Yet some of the strongest memories are smaller. In the morning, the bakery Levain pulls sourdough loaves from the oven and sells kougelhopf studded with raisins soaked in Gewurztraminer marc. At the chocolate shop Skulptur, the pralines and fruit jellies come flavoured with fir and Alsatian saffron. A box bought on the last morning tends to last for weeks at home, one piece at a time.

Both restaurants fill fast, so tables are worth booking well ahead, and Kaysersberg is at its busiest in high summer and around its Christmas market. Alsace has no shortage of pretty villages, several of them selling more souvenirs than bread. Kaysersberg feels different, and Le Chambard is a large part of the reason, because its standards seem to have rubbed off on the shops and kitchens around it. For anyone who travels to eat, it is one of the most magical addresses in France.

On the last evening, the winstub door opens once more and the hearts on the ceiling turn on their threads, as they have for every table before. Weeks later, at home, the box from Skulptur is nearly empty. The last praline tastes of fir and saffron, and for a moment the hearts are turning again.