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The Best Chef in the World… is in Roanne, France, with a family tree that’s rooted in Italy, Brazil and Japan. Why Michel Troisgros is worth the journey. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Recipe | Itinerary | Home
To arrive at Hôtel Restaurant Troisgros by train, as so many patrons once did, is to respect tradition. The local from ever-prosperous Lyon to once-thriving Roanne meanders through countryside and villages that seem to have changed hardly at all. Homes have lace curtains. Meadows are lush with wildflowers. The simple restaurant by the poste de gare in Saint-Romain-de-Popey awaits disembarking passengers, as the now grand Troisgros did decades earlier. Finally, the train glides into the Roanne station, located across the street from a building where, almost a half-century ago, a boy looked out the window of his room and contemplated where life might someday take him. “I remember the steam whistle, so noisy, the smells from the charcoal. For years this is what I saw,” says Michel Troisgros, now 48, a small, dark, slightly stocky man, who smiles often and would appear to be a very tough fellow if he did not. “I had only one idea, to take the train and go away. I was like a boy living on a harbour. It was the boat for him, but the train was the same dream for me.” So many relatives lived in those rooms above the restaurant: his father, Pierre, and his uncle, Jean, two of the most famous members of a generation of chefs who defined French cuisine; their families; the grandfather. “And don’t forget the dogs and cats,” Michel says. Clearly, the children longed to be elsewhere because that is where all but Michel went. His brother, Claude, well known and well travelled, is now a chef and restaurateur in Brazil. The one who came home when it was his duty to do so was Michel. He has now been chef of the family restaurant for almost a quarter-century, which is not what he dreamed of doing, but he does not complain about what he has become. To me – someone who has eaten in every important restaurant in Paris and in the United States and at a ridiculous number of other gastronomic shrines – he has become the best chef on earth. Several years ago, I arrived here in the company of four wine collectors, gentlemen with far too much money to spend on leisure pursuits. We ate a $5,000 meal that included Troisgros’ variation on Kiev: Instead of the old-fashioned preparation of deep-fried chicken and herb butter, his Kiev was a crunchy pastry shell stuffed with pigeon, black truffle, foie gras and spinach, the pinnacle of fried food. We liked it so much, we stayed an extra day and spent another $5,000, mostly for the incomparable pleasure of eating that Kiev again. To dine at Troisgros is to experience all that classic French food once meant and to savour everything that modern French food has become. It is more than just magnificent cooking because for food to be great, it must be more than flavourful – even if that seems to be all that customers and critics nowadays demand. It must also pass another test, the verdict of history. |
