Just outside of Paris in a small town called Saint-Vrain, sits one of the most wonderful hotels in the world. You’re allowed to take this opinion with a grain of salt; I seldom stay in hotels, especially not extraordinary ones. But on the last day of June, I schlepped from Paris with two months worth of luggage and an ill-laid plan to spend an evening at Le Doyenné. And it was wonderful. 

I mention the planning of it all only because if you, too, end up booking a stay here, you’ll have to consider, more carefully than I did, how to get there. There is a train which drops you in a town a couple of miles away, but if you plan to go on a Sunday like me, there is no option from there other than to walk. No buses, no cabs for miles. If you’re lucky, you can attract the attention of a stranger and beg them for a ride. As it goes, on this particular day, I found myself lucky.

Over the last year, I have received care from strangers in many different ways. And every time it feels like being mothered. But in this particular case, I really did arrive at Le Doyenné in the back seat of a car that belonged to somebody's mother. Although I am, for obvious reasons, typically averse to hitchhiking, as the saying goes: desperate times... 

So I let the woman pick me up at the train station in Bouray, where I was so obviously stranded, as her daughter waited patiently in the passenger seat. We loaded my suitcase, the size of a small boat, into the trunk of her Honda CRV, like the kind I drove during my second year of college, and arrived, just before five, at the gates of the hotel, marked ‘Le Doyenné’ in fine cursive made from bent metal. 

We pulled down the long driveway laid with loose stone. There is something about the sound of tires on gravel that always rings with arrival. I unloaded my things, thanked the woman profusely and was guided to the entrance of the guest house. 

The estate now occupied by Le Doyenné once belonged to the Countess of Barry, the last mistress of King Louis XV. She was executed by the guillotine during the French Revolution on accusations of treason. And you can almost feel the ghost of its particularly French history in the walls of the hotel today, ordained with classic French charm in every detail: wooden beams and ornate wallpaper, terracotta tiles, warped windows that open to the garden. 

Check-in takes place at a large, stained oak table that doubles as a bar. In the same room, they are setting up for service and you can hear the clammer of dishes somewhere in the distance coming from the open kitchen. I am offered a drink, which I will come to accept after I’ve settled in, and am shown to my room, which was small but comfortable. Hues of green. White linen. I think it smelled of springtime. 

I shower and change for dinner, put on my new dress, pull my hair back in a headband and am overcome by this feeling that I am made of porcelain. 

Before I step out of my room, I pause for a moment and consider if I should be wearing shoes. Something about the comfort and care of my arrival. About dressing up for dinner like I was playing a part. Something so natural about going barefoot, going back in time, going back to summers when I was a kid and shoes were simply the callouses that formed on my heels from hot tar and barnacles. I slip on sandals, grab a book and my journal, and head downstairs. 

The dining room was still mostly empty and I took a seat at a small, bistro-style table on the patio and ordered my first glass of wine. The wine list was as expected, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: natural wines made by small producers from across Europe, though with an obvious French tilt. The ethos of Le Doyenné rests on its commitment to seasonality, and its wines are no exception. I started with a glass of Domaine Mosse pet-nat rosé,  a near-perfectglass of wine for summer,the color of watermelon, with notes of rose and lemon. It’s bright and effervescent with a pepperiness akin to that of arugula, and it pairs wonderfully  with a small bowl of olives marinated in sumac and fennel like the one I snacked on as I waited. 

I watched through the large windows as the kitchen staff hurried around, tasting sauces by the teaspoon and adding pinches of salt to various pots. A woman examined for a moment one of the dinner plates, put it down, picked it back up again, and replaced it with another. There is a rhythm, a precision, an intentionality that makes it so easy to understand what people mean when they liken professional kitchens to the ballet. 

Dinner began around seven. As guests trickled in from their respective rooms like they’d just woken up from a long season of hibernation, I sipped on my second glass of wine–a 2022 Burgundy Pinot Noir from producer Damien Bastian called 'Ton Rouge du Lac' of Haute-Savoie. The wine is warm and riddled with tension, a semi-carbonic maceration that is rich and bright, crunchy and smooth, with notes of sour cherry and wet stone. On its label, a cartoon man lounges in a hammock. In the dining room, the sun hung low in the sky as if to allow us more time. Everything bathed in light. I can’t remember very many times in my life when I have felt time open up for me. But then for a few moments, awash in the golden hour sun that filled the room whose walls were made of glass, the past and the future seemed to melt away in the flood. All that was left was a version of myself that I had somehow become.

There was a moment just before the sun set when the room filled with a shade of gold like that etched into ancient art. And suddenly, all at once, every single man in the room took out his phone to capture the woman opposite them glowing in the late evening light. And I thought that must be what love feels like: a reflexive sort of rapture.

There is love of a different kind in the meal that’s served, which, as a solo diner, I’m eager to receive. Laurie Colwin once said, “Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.” Nowhere could this be more true than at Le Doyenné. The meal is a series of ten courses, a mix of meats and cheese and vegetables most of which come from the farm on which the property sits. Three plates with one slice each of hand cured meats to start. An array of crudité–a quarter of a radish, a sliver of fennel–each garnished accordingly. A side of pain complet maison served with salted butter on a half shell. My favorite, an ajoblanco flavored with vinegar—perhaps made of sherry or red wine—and drizzled with good olive oil, is served somewhere in the middle. This pairs exceptionally well with the recommended glass of orange wine from Catalonia — about which I can now recall everything but the name: three weeks on the skins, a blend of Macabeu and Grenache Blanc that tastes of orange blossom, peach, and apricot. It’s served chilled, which accentuates its gentle acidity. A cut of lamb cooked to perfection swimming in brown sauce to finish. Each course slightly more filling than the last, until you’re eating the second of two desserts, finishing up the last of your wine, fortunate to be wearing a dress and not a tight fitting pair of pants. 

I have long had in my head a narrative that I am an unlucky person. And you can take this, too, with a grain of salt, as my life — full of its own nuance and bouts of bone-deep depression — is quite a privileged one. But still I have this feeling that the world can be split into two groups: those who catch breaks and those who don’t. To be a member of the latter is to seek evidence of it — however small — everywhere. In spilled coffee and the jeans I waited one-too-many days to return. In the market that’s run out of lemons or that one person who forgot to call on my birthday. Losing my keys, losing my wallet, losing all hope — all boiled down to something as rudimentary as luck. 

The night I spent at Le Doyenné, I wrote in my journal, “There is something about this moment which is so amazing and which I’m so lucky to be experiencing. I would have missed it, all of this, and I wouldn’t have even known that I was missing it, had I not decided to come here. And I didn’t learn French and I haven’t ‘made it’ but I have landed on what gives my life meaning and have chosen to pursue it.” 

Whether that is luck, or my decision to see it as such, seems to matter less to me these days. After all, luck loses its meaning to things like choice. And I can choose to be here for these moments in my life. To know a good thing when it happens. 

And then the sun set.

By the time the meal finished, the sky had taken on a blue so deep, that it was easy to get lost in. I moved outside for a cup of black coffee and a cigarette. On the patio, it was silent. Not the sound of crickets. Not even the sound of voices in my head. And maybe it is the wine or the coffee or the cigarettes. I can’t say for sure, but I think this is what surrender feels like. 

A version of this story first appeared on amuse-bouche.