Gluten-free Provence, “free, committed and regenerative” by Nadia Sammut

The first thing that strikes you when you arrive in June at La Fenière, a 7-hectare estate near Lourmarin, at the foot of the Luberon, is the uninterrupted song of the cicadas. "They've only been back for a few weeks, but it's as if they've always been there," says Nadia Sammut, who seven years ago took over the reins of the inn, which her parents, Reine and Guy, built in 1996. She transformed the gourmet restaurant, renamed Le Goût du Bonheur, and opened a seasonal outdoor bistro, Une Table à la Campagne. Both offer gluten- and lactose-free cuisine, a rare proposition that, far from following a fashionable stance, stems from a personal story built partly on suffering.

Sitting on the shaded terrace of her house, a former 19th ^- century coaching inn located slightly away from the Provençal farmhouse that houses her restaurant, the forty-year-old confides, between the end of a service and the start of a lesson...