Rue Jean Mermoz, Haute-Savoie
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Most kitchens ask where an ingredient comes from. Le Clos des Sens asks how far it has travelled. The rule is a circle drawn roughly a hundred kilometres around Annecy, and anything from outside it needs a very good reason to get in. Inside the line lie Lake Geneva, the glaciers of Mont Blanc, the vineyards of Savoie and, strictly speaking, a slice of Switzerland. Lyon, which likes to call itself the gastronomic capital of France, sits a few kilometres outside. Nobody here seems too upset about it.
The border post occupies Annecy-le-Vieux's first school, a handsome house from 1866 on the slope above the lake. Laurent and Martine Petit opened their restaurant here in 1992 and spent three decades making it a table that food lovers crossed real borders for. In 2023 they handed it to two of their own, the chef Franck Derouet and Thomas Lorival, who started out as the sommelier. The pupils now run the school, and the controls are as strict as ever.
Upstairs are just eleven rooms. The Nature rooms have the warmth of a chalet; the Signature rooms sit under the old schoolhouse roof, with views over the lake or the town. Outside, centuries-old chestnut trees shade a terrace that looks across the water to the Bauges, and further down the garden a heated pool, a Nordic bath and a row of hammocks deal with the afternoon.
Then the paperwork begins. Féra and perch from the lake are locals and walk straight through. Vegetables, wild herbs and mushrooms arrive from the garden up the stairs or the hills around. Meat is admitted only as a seasoning, mostly when fishing is closed, on something like a day visa. The drinks list, it must be said, runs a more relaxed policy, waving through sake, beer, kombucha and kefir from a cellar of some three thousand references.
Summer gets confiscated, too, in the nicest way. Beside the fireplace, around six hundred jars of preserves sit beneath a glass floor, so guests walk across next winter's dinner on the way to their table. At the end of the meal comes the cheese, some forty Savoyard cheeses on spruce boards, every one of them a native, and in summer the garden turns into Le Cortil, an open-air table of wood-fired plates.
This is a restaurant with rooms rather than a resort. The day revolves around dinner, there is little to do beyond the pool, and eleven rooms vanish fast. Annecy-le-Vieux is a quiet residential hillside, not the lakefront, so the water is a view and a short drive away rather than a beach at the end of the lawn, and the tasting menu asks for a free evening and a serious appetite.
The only things in the house that have come more than a hundred kilometres are the guests. They are let in anyway. It is noticeable, though, how many of them leave wondering whether they might move a little closer.
The school bell
When the roof was re-covered in 2020 with French scale tiles and pre-patinated zinc, the bell of Annecy-le-Vieux's old school was kept and given pride of place.
In good weather the restaurant moves outside, to a shaded terrace with as many places as the dining room, about thirty. Centuries-old chestnut trees close over the tables, lamps hang from the branches, and the view runs over Annecy and the lake to the summits of the Bauges. Below it lies the aromatic garden, laid out in sixteen raised beds.
The Signature rooms were created in 2012 with ICMArchitectures of Aix-les-Bains under the roof of the old school, with its beams left exposed. They face Annecy and the lake, open directly onto the swimming lane in the herb garden, and each has a fireplace and a whirlpool bath. The Annecy decorator Vincent Genuyt is now reworking their spaces.
Since spring 2020 a long, narrow pool has run through the middle of the aromatic garden, its terraces rebuilt by a collective of Annecy craftsmen. At the far end, in the shade of an acacia, hang hammocks beside a Nordic bath, and the outdoor shower is reached along a path of living willow. The town shows between the trees.
Thirty places in a room of burnt wood, Savoie stone and cut crystal, with spruce, larch and ash shaped by fire. A sculptural fireplace stands in it, and a monumental pass in Savoie blue stone links the room to the kitchen. A separate salon takes a party privately, and every table is set apart from the next.
At a glance
Where
13 rue Jean Mermoz, 74940 Annecy-le-Vieux, Haute-Savoie; on the heights above Lake Annecy, facing the Bauges massif; 3 km from the lake and the old town; about 30 minutes from Geneva international airport and from La Clusaz and Le Grand-Bornand
Why this one
Eleven rooms in the restaurant's house.
Lake fish and garden vegetables.
Pool, Nordic bath, hammocks.
The Edit Notes
The two room types differ in more than name. The Nature rooms, the first built in 2004, sit in the original building and have the close, wood-lined feel of a chalet; they were renovated in 2024 and 2025. The Signature rooms, created in 2012 under the old school roof, are larger and more designed, face Annecy and the lake, and open straight onto the swimming lane. Room 6, above the restaurant, is the newest, with a fireplace, an outsized shower and a view of the village and mountains.
Rooms are let for the nights from Tuesday to Saturday; only in high summer, from 14 June to 22 August in 2026, does the hotel take guests every night. The restaurant serves from Tuesday dinner to Saturday dinner, without Thursday lunch, and adds Sunday dinner in summer. The house also closes for spells around late April, late August to early September and the days before Christmas. A Sunday-to-Monday stay outside summer is not possible, so the dates need fixing before anything else.
Every menu is served to everyone at the table, so the choice is made together. The shortest runs to four courses and is offered at weekday lunch outside July, August and public holidays; the seven-course menu is not served on Friday or Saturday evenings; the nine-course menu is served at every sitting. Pairings come as wine, as juice, or across every drink in the house, from sake and beer to kombucha and kefir. The house says pairings can be adapted to each guest's wishes.
The summer restaurant in the vegetable garden runs independently of the gastronomic table, with its own phone line and email for reservations. Cooking is over a beech-wood fire, plates are shared, and each season a chef in residence takes charge. It opens on fine evenings except Wednesdays and is reached by its own staircase from the car-park entrance. For a two-night stay it makes a natural second dinner; the official dates vary between sources, so check the season when booking.
The price question
The money buys a room a staircase away from the dining room, in a house of eleven rooms where the evening is the point of the stay. It does not buy a lakefront, a spa or a seven-night week: the water is 3 km away, the garden is the leisure, and outside high summer the hotel closes on Sunday and Monday nights. The comparison is a dinner at the Clos and a drive back to a hotel by the lake.
Book it for one or two nights between Tuesday and Saturday, built around the tasting menu, with a Signature room for the view and the pool, and Le Cortil as the second dinner in summer. A family wanting a week of lake activities, or a stay over a Sunday in spring, will be better placed elsewhere.
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The Extra Edit
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