“Sorry, we’ve been out feeding the pigs!” It’s one of the wilder excuses I’ve heard from a chef running late for an interview. But as James Henry gets talking, it gets wilder still.

The lauded France-based, Australian-born chef is telling the history of the chateau grounds now home to his farmhouse restaurant, Le Doyenne, on the outskirts of Paris.

“It’s quite insane,” he tells Broadsheet. “In the ’80s it was a drive-through safari park. There were elephants, tigers, wolves, monkeys, gazelles ... And a lot of the infrastructure from that is still existing. We use part of the old tiger enclosure to fence our pigs.”

These days, it’s more beauty than beasts. A centuries-old barn, once dilapidated, is now a destination diner of grand proportions, complete with an adjoining guesthouse and shop. Original timber beams draw your gaze up to the cathedral-like roof, then out into the verdant potager, or kitchen garden, through two completely glass-paned walls.

It’s in many ways a dream restaurant, and the very definition of a passion project, taking six years to come to fruition. So it’s some crescendo for a chef who wasn’t initially sure he wanted to be one. “We grew up eating well at home, I tore through cookbooks,” says Henry, raised mainly in Brisbane. “I just never thought it’d be a great career path.”

Fresh out of school, he spent years working on a remote cattle station in the NT and on surf-charter boats off the coast of Sumatra, before tumbling into kitchens across Brisbane and then Byron Bay, at Raes on Wategos.

Then, in the late 2000s, a short but seminal stint under Melbourne chef Andrew McConnell at his original restaurant Cumulus Inc changed everything. “It was like nothing I’d ever experienced,” Henry says. “One of the biggest takeaways was, regardless of whether it’s a mixed-leaf salad or a beautiful piece of fish – or meat – not to compromise on how you approach it. It was really formative.” Not least because it’s where he met his business partner in Le Doyenne, Aussie chef Shaun Kelly.

When London came calling for Kelly, who went on to work at renowned nose-to-tail diner St John, Henry plotted a path for Paris. A job at acclaimed American chef Daniel Rose’s restaurant Spring was a foot in the door, but with his visa expiring, he booked a flight home. “Paris is a city that takes time to get to know ... I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay.”

Meanwhile, a motley crew he knew was opening a small neighbourhood neo-bistro, Au Passage, and needed a chef. Henry needed cash, so he bumped his flight. “I said, ‘It’s only going to work if you give me free rein, carte blanche’ – within budget ... I took that formula from Cumulus, which wasn’t really common at the time, to do share plates [and] it all snowballed from there.” The restaurant was heaving. He never caught that flight.

Next came his own restaurant Bones, an instant hit, where he tempered the chaos of service with the calm of baking his own bread and churning his own butter. After three frenetic years, Henry shuttered the restaurant, but firmly rooted in France, he was up for a new challenge. The search led him and Kelly 41 kilometres south of Paris, “where agriculture meets the suburbs”, to Chateau de Saint-Vrain, which has been in the same family for more than two centuries. (Prior, it’s said to have been a country retreat for Comtesse du Barry, a foe of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution, and Italy’s noble Borghese family). The private estate included a “derelict” barn and walled garden. “With a lot of imagination, we saw a lot of potential.”

The site’s rich heritage meant red tape, so the renovation was slow-going. So, at the same time, the pair got in touch with their green thumbs, planting an orchard and toiling to restore the potager and greenhouse to their former glory. Now, Le Doyenne grows 100 per cent of its fruit and vegetables during the warmer half of the year, which led to the restaurant picking up a Michelin “green star” for sustainable gastronomy in the guide’s recent list.

The bounty is harvested each morning for a menu that’s rigorously seasonal. “Certain things – peas, broad beans, asparagus – there’s a three-, if you’re lucky four-week window in a year, and they’re gone.” The purest expression is an hors d’oeuvre called “crudités from the garden”, a plate of meticulously presented, individually garnished raw vegetables “that’s come to be symbolic of the richness of what we’re growing”.

For Henry, inspiration comes from all over, whether surveying the potager from the pass (“especially when it’s calm on days off”), thumbing through an old-school Rockpool cookbook, or one of those transformative travel experiences. “When I travel, how I can eat comes first, and if I can surf it’s an added bonus.”

In his early life, “Living really remotely in Sumatra was incredible, visiting markets, catching your own fish. And the spices! The depth of flavour was on another level.” In more recent years, Japan was a masterclass in minimalism. “You go to high-end kaiseki or sushi restaurants and you’re having the most memorable bites of your life, which on appearance are so simple, because it’s just the absolute best produce made to order without artifice.”

Since opening in 2022, Le Doyenne has been making similarly indelible marks on diners, including locals to the region (where Henry now lives – his home life is as bucolic as his work); Parisians from both the Left and Right banks (“They don’t always have the same expectations of restaurants, and this seems to resonate with both”); famous chefs (“Eric Frechon from the Bristol is about the biggest deal you can get in Paris”); and Aussies on tour (“We had Andrew McConnell ... and I guess Kylie Minogue is worth mentioning”).

In May, Henry is homeward bound for the first time since Le Doyenne opened – for Bougie Brassiere, a fancy French dinner he’s cooking alongside dessert king Darren Purchese and Magill Estate’s Scott Huggins for Tasting Australia. “It’s been two years. I’m excited to see what’s happening in Australia – and Adelaide especially.”

ledoyennerestaurant.com

tastingaustralia.com.au

This story is part of The Travel Issue: Wish You Were Here.