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The Best Chef in the World1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Recipe | Itinerary | Home
The cuisine of Michel Troisgros occasionally bends to the same South American rhythms as Claude’s. It honours the backgrounds of his father (Burgundian) and his mother (Italian). I sometimes think his greatest single accomplishment is an amuse-bouche that was inspired by a visit to Piedmont: an elongated cracker spread with salted butter and topped with anchovies and black truffles, the anchovy inexplicably supercharging the truffle. I hesitate to tell him this because I do not think three-star Michelin chefs appreciate being celebrated for their pre-meal snacks. Most significantly, the influence is Japanese, which has been a factor in the Troisgros family for decades, long before “fusion” became a culinary and not a thermonuclear term. The genius of this cuisine is not its complications but its clarity. On his menu, Troisgros’ Japanese-influenced dishes, such as steamed sea bass fillet in an infusion of seaweed on koshihikari rice, sound elaborate. On the plate, they are astoundingly focused. Regardless of what he might affix to a basic French recipe, even a touch of the mustard-like, fiery Asian condiment yuzu kosho, every flavour comes precisely to the point. No other chef prepares food of such towering ambition that is so deliriously easy to eat. The link between the Troisgros family and Japan is profound and is perhaps the reason the food appears to come from a common culture, not a mixture of two different ones. (Japanese influences are even more evident at the restaurant of Hôtel Lancaster in Paris, where he is the consulting chef.) When Michel was a boy, in 1967, his father left for Japan to cook at the first French restaurant to open in Tokyo, a branch of Maxim’s de Paris. Pierre remained there for a year, sending postcards to a son longing for his return. “I was only nine, but I did not see my father for a year, and when he came back, it was on the train to Roanne. The door opened – I can still see it – and he was wearing samurai clothes. A few weeks later, cases of food started arriving from Japan. It was the first time I ever tasted ginger, sweet ginger in cans. There was soy sauce. There was none in France. It was all a shock. Then the Japanese started coming, not just chefs to learn here, but Japanese guests too.” Eventually, Michel did get to travel, mostly to apprentice in the great restaurants of France, but he felt a responsibility to return when his Uncle Jean died of a heart attack on the tennis courts in 1983. Of all the brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, he had the fewest obligations. His wife, Marie-Pierre, agreed. “I know now,” he says, “that being here was the sense of my life. I can tell that today.” When he hesitates, I ask him if he ever envies Claude, who has taken culinary independence to the extremes. Wistfully, he smiles. “Sometimes,” he says. “He is free. Claude can travel when his house is open. I can only travel when my house is closed. It is easier to have a restaurant in Brazil than in France.” The restaurant Michel Troisgros returned to, although legendary, would soon suffer. It was the same for most of the great countryside establishments of France. The TGV, the fast train, came along to link Paris and Lyon without stopping at Roanne. A new superhighway bypassed the city. He takes a piece of paper and sketches a map of the once indispensable RN7, now an outmoded road from Paris to Lyon. On or just off the road are Troisgros, La Côte d’Or (renamed Le Relais Bernard Loiseau) in Saulieu, Pic in Valence, La Pyramide in Vienne, l’Oustau de Baumaniere in Les Baux-de-Provence. These days, the chefs of those restaurants are revered; the late Fernand Point of La Pyramide is probably more celebrated than the Sun King. Back then, these establishments were merely fine places to dine, not shrines. |
