Le Cor de Chasse

Le Cor de Chasse, Wéris: Should You Book?

Picture a quiet Ardennes village where the pace drops, the forested hills close in, a hunting horn above the door signals that dinner here will be structured around the land outside. Le Cor de Chasse earns its Michelin star not by importing a metropolitan playbook into the countryside, but by building its menu around what the Ardennes actually produces: game, regional breeders' meat, local duck liver, foraged roots, seasonal fruit and vegetables that chef Mario Elias rotates throughout the year. If you are willing to drive to Wéris, this is a creative tasting-menu restaurant that justifies the trip on its own merits. If you need a flagship city address or a well-known dining room to justify the spend, look elsewhere.

The Venue in Detail

Le Cor de Chasse sits at Rue des Combattants 16 in Wéris, a hamlet within the municipality of Durbuy in the Belgian Ardennes. The setting matters here more than it would at a Brussels address: guests are not just booking a dinner table, they are choosing to spend an evening in one of Belgium's quietest pockets of countryside. The restaurant also offers hotel rooms with personalised decoration and an outdoor swimming pool, which makes an overnight stay the natural way to approach a visit. Booking just for dinner is an option, but arriving the day before and staying the night after turns a single meal into a considered getaway.

The atmosphere is composed rather than animated. This is not a loud urban dining room where energy carries the evening. The mood is controlled, the room measured, the experience is designed for guests who want to focus on what is on the plate. Sound levels stay low; conversation carries without effort. For food-focused travellers who find the ambient noise of city restaurants genuinely disruptive, the quiet here is a feature, not a limitation. It sits closer to a country house dining room than a destination restaurant making a statement with its interior.

Chef Mario Elias works within a framework that is regional by design. The name references the hunting season directly, the menu reflects that honestly: game features when the season allows, but the kitchen's real signature is in how it frames the Ardennes larder at every point of the year. Local duck liver and bacon meet beetroot baked in a spruce crust alongside Jerusalem artichoke. Fish arrives with celery and truffle. Spelt risotto is built around dates, parsnip, roasted buckwheat. A dessert takes its inspiration from the Guerlain Homme fragrance, working mojito, bergamot, green tea into a course that reads as an intellectual exercise with a clear sensory result. This is creative cooking that stays accountable to its geography rather than using regionality as a marketing note while the plate goes elsewhere.

The Opinionated About Dining Classical in Europe ranking (422nd in 2025) and a consecutive Michelin star for 2024 and 2025 place this firmly in the tier of Belgian addresses worth planning around. That breadth of positive response is worth noting for guests who are travelling with companions less focused on the fine-dining circuit.

Belgium has a well-documented concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants at the €€€€ tier, with addresses like Boury in Roeselare, Zilte in Antwerp, and Hof van Cleve in Kruishoutem all operating at higher price points. Le Cor de Chasse at €€€ positions itself as the thoughtful Ardennes alternative: a starred creative tasting menu without the capital-city premium. For guests exploring the region around Durbuy, combining a meal here with the broader Wéris restaurant scene and an overnight stay makes practical and financial sense. The Wéris hotel options are limited, which makes the on-site rooms more strategically useful than they might be in a city.

For travellers building a wider Belgian fine-dining itinerary, L'air du Temps in Liernu offers a comparable countryside-rooted creative approach. Bozar Restaurant in Brussels serves as the urban counterpoint for those splitting time between city and country. If the Ardennes format appeals but you want to extend the trip further, Bartholomeus in Heist and Willem Hiele in Oudenburg are worth adding to the map for a coastal-to-countryside Belgian tour, while Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen and Arpège in Paris anchor the higher end if this meal opens an appetite for more ambitious creative cooking.

Weekend timing is the recommended approach for first-time visitors. The hotel rooms and outdoor swimming pool are most useful when you are not driving back the same evening, the rhythm of the Ardennes region generally rewards staying two nights rather than one. Booking difficulty is rated Hard: this is a small-capacity country restaurant with a Michelin star, it does not have the walk-in flexibility of a larger city address. Securing a table several weeks in advance is standard practice, peak game season will tighten availability further. Check the Wéris experiences guide and Wéris wineries guide to build the surrounding day, consult the Wéris bars guide if you are staying the night and want somewhere to go before or after dinner.