Michel Bras

A country inn in the south of France, the home base for a celebrated French chef—you'd expect it to be rustic, quaint, and historic, right? But Michel Bras's restaurant-hotel in the Auvergne is nothing like that. This strikingly spare contemporary structure thrusts from its isolated hillside like a rugged granite outcrop or a lonely alien spaceship, crash-landed on Earth.

Once inside, you'll immediately see what Bras is getting at. The elegantly stripped-down style of the dining room and guest rooms—bare floors and empty walls, widely spaced tables, a muted palette of solid colors—focuses your attention outward, through wraparound walls of glass, to focus on a breathtaking panorama of brilliant green grass, jagged granite, and a dramatic cloud-streaked sky. It's an ideal complement to Bras's self-taught style of cooking, which is equally minimalist and focused on his native Aubrac countryside. Beef dishes are made from the unique local breed of cattle; cheeses are made locally from unpasteurized cows' milk (try the divine aligot, potatoes mashed with that local cheese). The menu changes with the seasons, but vegetables figure prominently, from the spring delicacy of asparagus and green beans to the juicy meatiness of a grilled eggplant to the deep savor of roasted onions. Bras's most famous dish, gargouillou de jeunes légumes, is a salad of some 40 native vegetables, flowers, herbs, and seeds, many of them gathered from the hillsides just that morning.

When you look at a Michel Bras dish arranged on its simple white plate, it seems straightforward enough—meticulously arranged, true, but with just a few fairly familiar ingredients, left in their natural forms. It's the fresh purity of these ingredients, and Bras's brilliant seasonings, that have earned this place a reputation as one of the world's great restaurants.

Bras and his wife moved their famous restaurant from the village to this mountaintop site in 1992 and added accommodations for overnight guests (a smart move, considering how far Laguiole is from any major towns). It's a bona fide family affair. Sebastien Bras assists his father in the kitchen, overseeing the pastry creation, including Bras's most famous dessert, a warm chocolate cookie with a pool of liquid chocolate inside. Even Michel's mother—from whom he learned all his cooking, he insists—still lends a hand. In rhythm with the seasons, the property is only open April through October—the most beautiful times of year for this harsh, spectacular landscape. Reservations are notoriously hard to get, so start planning your trip now.