The Aussie chef who conquered the home of the Michelin star

During my lunch at Le Petit Leon, in the south-western French village of Saint-Leon-sur-Vezere, I hear chef Nick Honeyman referred to as one of three different nationalities.

As one waitperson introduces the nuances of the five- and seven-course degustation menu to a multi-generational French family dressed to celebrate a milestone birthday, she shares that Honeyman is from New Zealand and explains the cuisine’s Asian influences are drawn from his travels close to home.

Not long after, I overhear her colleague telling a couple on a lunch date that the chef is South African. And, as a filet of turbot, garnished with inky asparagus and floating on a foam of smoked chive and fermented buttermilk is placed in front of me, I’m informed that the smokiness of the dish is a nod to the barbecue culture of his homeland, Australia.

I doubt that Honeyman’s nationality is of great concern to the French; after all, the three countries named are English-speaking, rugby-playing, southern-hemisphere nations. But as an Australian living in France, it’s definitely a detail I need to clarify. After all, how many homegrown chefs go on to earn a Michelin star in the birthplace of the hallowed guide, as Honeyman did in 2024?

“It’s a hard one,” Honeyman says when I ask him what nationality he considers himself. “My mum’s an Aussie, I was born in South Africa, but I’ve spent 16 years of my adult life in New Zealand. I think I have more of a Kiwi and Aussie mentality, but I’m South African when they’re winning the rugby.”

I’m late for our pre-lunch meeting, too trusting of Google Maps to show me the quickest route through the dense oak forests that give this part of France’s Dordogne region the name Perigord Noir. The minutes are ticking down to the start of service but Honeyman, in a crisp all-black chef’s uniform, shows no sign of impatience. He graciously sits down at our table and instantly becomes my daughters’ favourite person when he reveals there are two dessert courses on the menu, one of which is his mum’s lemon cheesecake recipe.

When Honeyman and sommelier wife Sina took over the long-running seasonal bistro in 2020, it opened only for eight weeks in the height of summer, when most tourists descend on the region to visit its famous chateaux, caves filled with prehistoric art, and gentle rivers.

For the couple, it was an excuse for a paid European holiday to escape winter in Auckland, where Honeyman runs two-hatted Paris Butter. He had spent three weeks in the kitchen back in 2005, sent south from Paris by Pascal Barbot during a stint working with the acclaimed chef at Astrance. It was a world away from the fine-dining restaurants in which he cut his teeth, and the experience stuck with him.

“No one spoke any English, but I loved it and I kept up the connection,” Honeyman says. The couple saw it as a “low-risk” investment. That’s until it quickly became a dining destination in which people were prepared to invest a 400-kilometre round trip.

Eight weeks stretched out to six months and the restaurant now opens in spring (April or May) and shutters in October, with reservations booked out months in advance. Honeyman describes the cuisine as “story driven”. For me, the most charming one is how the wildflowers on my delicate sashimi-like layers of trout and scallop, served in a shell with a watercress sauce, were foraged by Honeyman and his two young daughters that very morning in the village.

If Honeyman has quickly won over even the most critical of locals, the location has quickly won over the Honeymans, who have made Saint-Leon-sur-Vezere their permanent home. Set on the bend of the Vezere River about 50 minutes south-east of Perigueux, the regional capital, the village looks like something straight out of a medieval storybook. A huddle of honey-hued stone buildings, each bearing the Dordogne’s traditional steep-pitched roofs made from lauze (slate) tiles, glow gold under the touch of the mid-morning sun. The couple has just cemented a year-round presence by opening another restaurant in the nearby village of Montignac-Lascaux, naming it ro.bo, after the dog who uncovered the network of prehistoric-art-filled caves that made the village famous in the 1940s.

After lunch, my daughters and I walk the few minutes it takes from the restaurant to reach the verge of the Vezere, where canoe companies are sending their first visitors of the season off on river excursions. The sweet fragrance of wisteria in bloom fills the early spring air. It’s one of the last corners of France you would expect to find an Aussie Michelin-starred chef, but what a delightful one it is.

THE DETAILS

EAT
The five-course degustation menu is priced at €95 ($169), the seven-course €130 ($230). Wine pairing €70 ($124). Book in advance. See restaurantlepetitleon.fr

FLY
Turkish Airlines flies from Sydney to Istanbul, via Kuala Lumpur, four times a week, and from Melbourne three times a week via Singapore. From Istanbul, the airline flies daily to Bordeaux or Toulouse. Count between two and 2½ hours’ drive from either gateway. See turkishairlines.com.

STAY
Ro.bo, Honeyman’s second restaurant, is inside the atmospheric Hotel de Bouilhac, a grand 17th century manor house just across from the Vezere in Montignac-Lascaux. Rooms are poetically named (Scent of Summer suite, Nightingale Song suite) and brim with period charm. Doubles from €199 ($352). See hoteldebouilhac.com

MORE
lascaux-dordogne.com
france.fr

The writer was a guest of Le Petit Léon