La Maison des Cimes began opening on the shore of Lake Saint-Point on 29 August 2026, bringing chef Matthias Marc back to the Doubs region where he grew up.
The four-star Relais & Châteaux property in Malbuisson combines nine rooms and suites, the gastronomic La Table des Cimes and a second restaurant called the Bistrot des Bûcherons. The complete house is not opening at once. The current schedule places the first rooms and La Table des Cimes in operation from 29 August, the remaining suites in October and the bistro in November.
Anyone booking this autumn needs to hold that in mind. A table at La Table des Cimes does not mean every advertised room category exists yet, and it certainly does not mean both restaurants are running.
La Table des Cimes is the first reason to travel
Two tasting menus. Nenni Ma Foi at €110, Vingt Dieux at €160, with regional reporting putting service from Wednesday to Sunday, lunch and dinner.
Wood fire is the central method. Freshwater fish, wild plants, herbs, buds, game and the produce of the Jura and the Haut-Doubs run through the kitchen, and none of it is decoration. Those ingredients are the structure of the menu.
Marc built a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris with Substance, opened in 2018 and starred in 2022. He left the city at the end of 2025 to build this with his wife, Hanna Marc.
La Table des Cimes holds no star. That recognition belongs to Substance, and it does not travel with the chef until the guides have eaten in Malbuisson.
The bistro follows on 1 November
The Bistrot des Bûcherons opens on 1 November 2026, working the same flame and the same wood through a looser format drawn from mountain inns and family meals.
Two restaurants make the house far more useful across several nights. A tasting menu justifies the drive up here once. Almost nobody wants that degree of formality on two consecutive evenings, and the bistro gives residents and locals a simpler answer without leaving the culinary identity of the place behind.
It may also stop the house becoming a restaurant with bedrooms attached. A hotel needs a rhythm that survives the hours either side of dinner.
Nine rooms keep the hospitality visible
Nine rooms and suites, all facing the water. Several carry private Nordic baths, and one more sits outside in the garden for the house as a whole.
The building was the Atelier de Donat, a carpenter’s workshop. Hanna Marc drew the interiors with local architect Marc Billamboz and regional craftspeople, in wood, stone, schist and natural fibres.
At nine keys, design hides nothing. A delay, an inconsistent turndown, a message nobody answered: all of it becomes personal within an hour. The compensation is that a house this size can actually be run as a house rather than as a small corporate hotel.
Hanna Marc brings interior design and hospitality training from Lausanne, Sylvain Courivaud arrives as executive chef after working with Matthias Marc at both Substance and Braise, and Eulalie Mariton runs the restaurants and the wine programme.
The cellar places the Jura beside the wider wine world
Roughly 800 references in the cellar, around 400 of them from the Jura.
Half the cellar local, half the world. That is the right proportion, because Jura has become fashionable among collectors and sommeliers without becoming understood: oxidative vin jaune, ouillé Chardonnay, Savagnin, Poulsard and Trousseau do entirely different jobs at a table.
A serious list explains that. Mariton’s job starts the moment an international guest arrives full of enthusiasm and short on producers, vintages and methods.
Malbuisson is easier from Switzerland than many French rural openings
La Maison des Cimes stands close to the Swiss border at an altitude of almost 1,000 metres. The hotel lists Lausanne at approximately 45 minutes by car, Geneva Airport at around 90 minutes and the Métabief mountain area at roughly ten minutes. Paris is advertised at roughly two and a half hours by rail, plus the final transfer.
Three markets, not one.
For the French it is a weekend of eating and walking. For the Swiss it is barely an expedition. For everyone else Malbuisson combines with Lausanne, the vineyards above Lake Geneva, or a longer run through the Jura.
That Swiss proximity will matter most outside the French holiday weeks, when nine rooms need steady regional demand rather than an occasional paragraph in the international press.
The lake and forest must remain part of the stay
The project presents Lake Saint-Point, the surrounding forests and the Marc family’s forestry background as central to its identity.
That is a real advantage over a restaurant-led hotel that could have been dropped into any attractive piece of countryside. It is also an obligation: a guest ought to leave understanding the territory, not just the view from the bed.
Walking routes, seasonal gathering, the fishing, the forestry, Métabief above: enough for several days. The trick will be organising it without turning ordinary rural work into theatre.
The best version of this house lets the Haut-Doubs explain the menu. The weak version uses the forest as an interior-design reference and stops there.
What remains to be judged after the phased opening
The house has published its inventory, restaurant concepts, team and opening calendar. Several questions require an operating season rather than launch material:
- how many of the nine accommodation categories are available before October;
- how service works when both restaurants are operating;
- whether the bistro attracts local demand throughout winter;
- how much privacy exists around the Nordic baths;
- whether the wine programme is accessible to guests unfamiliar with Jura wines;
- how the property handles transport for visitors arriving without a car.
Book against what is confirmed for your dates. Not against the finished house shown on the website.
Luxury.it perspective
La Maison des Cimes has a real reason to be in Malbuisson. The chef has come home, the ingredients come from the ground outside, and nine rooms are too few for the hotel to drift away from its own kitchen.
Say the staggered opening plainly and it becomes a strength. La Table des Cimes is running, the suites arrive in October, the bistro in November, and that sequence buys the team the months it needs before everything is tested at once.
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