Have I Found the Greatest Restaurant in the World?

Which is the world's greatest restaurant? This impossible question was broached during a Manhattan lunch with a gourmet friend some months ago. We agreed that the food at this particular restaurant was none too good and the service almost too bad. So our conversation turned to great restaurants we had known and I mentioned the almost-perfect cuisine and service of the restaurant of the brothers Troisgros in the small French town of Roanne, about 87 kilometers northwest of Lyons. I had last visited Troisgros back in 1961, when it was rated with only one star in the Guide Michelin. Now the brothers had three stars and the gourmets of the world were beating a path to their tables. My friend asked: "Do you think Troisgros might be the greatest?"

Instantly sensing a magnificent opportunity, I said that since I was leaving for France the following week, I would gladly dine at Troisgros and give him a definitive answer, provided he would pay for one of my meals. A few weeks later, after visiting some vineyards along the Rhine, I crossed from Germany into France bound for Roanne, a small, semi-industrial town of about 50,000 people. Perhaps because it is the center of a large farming, meat-packing and wine-producing district, it looks a bit like a New England market village. In front of the railroad and bus stations, the single main street opens out into the place de la gare, with freight yards, boxcars and factory chimneys all around. Facing the stations is a row of shops: a camera mart, a supermarket, a hairdresser, a display of bicycles and motorcycles on the sidewalk, a gas station and, on the corner, two shops joined below a vertical neon sign reading Troisgros.

I remember, when I first saw the sign in 1961, I couldn't believe that the word Troisgros was a family name. How would you like to be called John Threefatmen? I thought the restaurant must be named (continued on page 116)Greatest Restaurant(continued from page 107) named The Three Fat Men. Not true. Troisgros is the legal name of the owners.

Theirs is the simplest three-star entrance one has ever seen. No canopy. No doorman. You step straight from the sidewalk into the dining room. A tall and elegantly dressed young woman greets you with: "Good evening, I am Madame Jean Troisgros." She succeeds at once in making you feel that you are being welcomed as a guest in her home. (Her name is Maria and she told me later: "While I am seating the guests, I try to find out what it is essential for us to know in order to serve them as perfectly as possible. Are they grands gastronomes who will say, 'Attention! I will give the orders!'? Or are they beginners wanting to learn? At once, I relay the information to my husband or my brother-in-law in the kitchen so that one of them can come out and discuss a suitable meal.")

The modernized country-style dining room is comfortable but not luxurious. It was almost full and I counted 52 people, obviously local businessmen with their wives and children, giving the place the atmosphere of a neighborhood bistro. The French chatter was at the level of a roar. At the back, gruff voices at the bar seemed to be debating by shouting, and from the open kitchen door came voices raised to an ecstasy of anger. The maître d'hôtel, Gérard, offered the three prix fixe menus, at $9, $12 and $16, tips and taxes, but not wines, included. (The Troisgros brothers say, "Our lower prices are fixed for the service of our local customers. They come once or twice a week and bring us three quarters of our income.")

Two impeccably dressed chefs with hauts chapeaux sauntered casually out of the kitchen, grinning broadly, shaking hands, patting shoulders, quipping in high-speed French. Although the two brothers have stayed together and worked together all their lives as if they were twins (Jean is now 45 and Pierre, 43), they could hardly be more different in appearance and personality. Jean is six feet tall, with a long face and a manner that marks him as a rebel, a satirist, a man with a faintly mocking outlook on life. Pierre is short and round, with a body so flexible it might belong to a circus clown, but with a determined and serious face. Both are true Burgundians in their gaiety, their irreverent laughter, their lightning intelligence and wit.

They "proposed" my dinner in the basic Troisgros way. Printed menus are for conceited tourists who think they know best. Wiser guests leave it to the Troisgros brothers to tell them what is in the cupboard that is not on the menu. It may be a superb pike, caught in the river an hour before--or a brown bear, trapped in the forest by some gypsies, who know that there is always cash available at the Troisgros' kitchen door. That night, there were live young female lobsters, just arrived by truck from the fishing port of Plougasnou on the Brittany coast. Also, Pierre was just back from a hunting trip in the Loire marshes and offered a wild duck.

The first course on the $16 menu was the great specialty of the house, Le Foie Gras Frais en Terrine--mixed duck and goose livers baked in a casserole and served cold, in slices that were pure velvet, richer and softer than I had ever tasted. When Pierre came by, I demanded the secret. He said: "No secret. We bake the livers very slowly. The terrine is just heated in the oven, then taken out, wrapped in seven thicknesses of woolen blankets and left on the kitchen table to cook itself overnight."

Then came the lobster, prepared à la Cancalaise, Cancale being a small seaport in Brittany. "The secret is in the way you flame the lobster," Pierre pointed out. "You pour the calvados into the pan, never over the lobster, and let only the flames lick the flesh, so as not to overpower the marvelous natural taste." With the shellfish, I had an excellent 1966 Chassagne-Montrachet--a noble white burgundy.

Pierre's roasted wild duck arrived garnished with peaches glazed in Vermont maple syrup, an unbelievable combination that turned out to be unbelievably magnificent. The sweetness had been cut by a touch of vinegar and what was left was the perfect foil for the gaminess of the undercooked flesh. It was all a very fragile balance that a red wine would upset, so Pierre chose a rich and soft 1966 Meursault--a private bottling especially to go with this dish.

Then came a well-laden cheese cart and, finally, Pierre's specially prepared dessert: a mille-feuille, so light that one half expected it to float away, filled with whipped cream and covered by a layer of glazed fresh raspberries.

With the coffee, there appeared at my table the grand old man of the Troisgros family, papa Jean-Baptiste--the most imaginative, most intelligent, most irrepressible, most ribald, most suspicious and yet most charming Burgundian I know. He was carrying an ancient, dusty, unlabeled bottle, which he opened at the table and poured into brandy snifters. He said he had found it in a corner of the cellar and wasn't quite sure what it was but guessed that it might be a marc de Pommard, privately distilled and bottled by one of their Pommard suppliers and sent to Troisgros as a Christmas present about 40years ago. It was smooth nectar--approximately as powerful as liquid dynamite--but with a body, bouquet and flavor that were near great.

I shall hotly deny that it was this brandy that brought me to the point of decision. As I sipped, I thought of the over-all qualities of the dinner. It had been astonishingly light--with never a trace of that blown-up feeling that inevitably seems to accompany a "great meal." One could sum it up by saying that there had not been the slightest pomposity about the food, the service nor the welcome. This perfectly uncomplicated food is the final and absolute overthrow of all the show-off haute cuisine that arose out of the extravagant excesses of luxury under Louis XIV at Versailles.

I turned to Jean-Baptiste: "How did you achieve this quality? How was it done?"

He said, "Our results may appear simple, but our methods are complicated. Stay with us a few days; my boys and I will show you."

As the dining room began to empty and the pressures of the evening decreased, Jean-Baptiste took me to a table in the bar, opened a bottle of champagne and told me the story of how this extraordinary restaurant was created out of the vision of a single family, over three generations and 75 years. In the 1890s, Jean-Baptiste's father ran a popular café in the Burgundian wine capital of Beaune. There, just before the turn of the century, Jean-Baptiste was born. "You see, monsieur, I was in the restaurant business the first day of my life. By the time I was seven, I could recognize all the different brandies blindfolded. I learned to taste food and wine with the customers. Those earthy Burgundians taught me that with food, the most important thing is quality and simplicity, while with wine, it is quality and complication."

By the time he was 12, Jean-Baptiste was already dreaming of being the proprietor of a great restaurant. At 20, he broke away from the Beaune bistro, went to the small wine town of Chalon-sur-Saône and soon opened his own Café des Négotiants (Café of the Wine Shippers). He married his Burgundian Marie and they had two sons, Jean and Pierre. Jean-Baptiste said, "When I took each, in turn, to be baptized, I first checked the holy water in the font and surreptitiously dropped in a pinch of salt and a few drops of fine olive oil. Then I asked monsieur le curé to please also baptize the baby as a good chef. I don't believe he did much, but I did think I detected a few stirring motions in the gestures of his right hand over the baby."

Jean-Baptiste saved his money in a sock in the mattress and decided to move (continued on page 244)Greatest Restaurant?(continued from page 116) on to a larger place in a busier town. He found the present property, on the corner of the station square in the "big city" of Roanne, where he could convert the entire ground floor into a bistro. They moved in 1930. From the first day, Jean-Baptiste was determined to make his bistro the most popular in town. He had exactly the personality for the job, the manner and voice of a sly clown, the skill of a master storyteller, with the ability to retail the town gossip in terms so malicious and ribald that the stories were only a hairbreadth from slander. Soon the bistro was jammed from morning to evening with people playing the local card game, tarots, rolling dice and listening to Jean-Baptiste, over endless cups of coffee and glasses of pastis.

Under papa Jean-Baptiste's firm and persuasive guidance, it never occurred to Jean and Pierre not to become chefs. Papa warned that if they wanted to be masters of the art, they would have to spend at least ten years learning the classic techniques in the major restaurants of Paris. In 1944, as soon as Paris was liberated, Jean, at 18, headed for the big city. Pierre soon followed and papa's parting advice was, "Stay with your brother and work together." They were together at the Pavillon d'Armenonville in the Bois de Boulogne. Together at the Hôtel Crillon. Together at Drouant. Together at the Restaurant de la Pyramide in Vienne.

Finally, Jean became the fish chef and Pierre the sauce chef at the foremost haute cuisine restaurant of Paris, Chez Lucas-Carton, where the kitchen was ruled with a rod of iron by a magnificent disciplinarian known to every chef in the city as Le Père Richard. Today, both brothers feel that the classical training they got from him was the major force in their gastronomic education.

In 1954, when the ten years of apprenticeship were up, Jean-Baptiste sent a message to his boys: "Maman is tired of cooking. I give you my bistro. Come home and run it. Love, Papa."

It arrived at the crucial moment. Jean said, "We were bored to death with the endless repetitions of the classic haute cuisine--a waste of money and time."

Pierre added, "Not only is haute cuisine finished--its excesses disgust me. OK. So if you have to spend three days to make a spun-sugar windmill to decorate a dish. make it. but then don't try to break it up and eat it. Send it to a museum and display it in a glass case."

In 1955, they were back home, together. Not long after, Jean met his wife Maria at the Roanne press ball. Pierre brought his girlfriend, Olympe, from Paris. "She was a waitress at one of the restaurants where we worked," Pierre whispered slyly. "I made love to her in the cold room between the carcasses of beef. One day, the chef opened the door and said, 'Oh, excuse me,' and slammed the door at once. He was a good chef." The day after each girl was married, she moved into the Troisgros house and became a waitress in the restaurant under the all-seeing eye of papa Jean-Baptiste.

"He was very hard," said Maria, "but now we all realize that he was right. He taught us the discipline of the search for perfection. Now. I believe, that is the mainspring of my life. It involves us all. Even our 14-year-old daughter, Catherine, will rush to me and say, 'Quick, look, Maman. That gentleman sitting alone in the corner. He seems to want something.' "

Although the two brothers were now classically trained chefs, they never had the slightest intention of converting papa's bistro into a temple of haute cuisine. Jean said, "We began changing the bistro into a restaurant, but very gradually. Our philosophy was la cuisine simple, but prepared as if we were trying to be a great restaurant."

After two years, in 1957, Michelin gave them one star. Then, in 1966, they moved up to two stars. Finally, on March 15, 1968, at crack of dawn, the copies of the new Michelin reached the bookstall of the railroad station. Jean strolled across the street and bought a copy. There they were. Three stars.

"Does it make a tremendous difference?" I asked.

Jean said, "Yes. In the tension of the atmosphere. When we had two stars, people came, relaxed and said to us, 'Oh, la la! You are simply marvelous! You deserve three stars!' Now they come in glowering and say with their eyes, 'Are you really that good? Prove to us that you are worth the long journey we have made!' "

For the next few days, I was involved in a fascinating experience. The Troisgros family invited me behind the scenes of their world of daily struggle toward excellence. The first morning, I was down at 6:30 with Olympe and Pierre, for l'ouverture, the opening up of the place before the staff arrives. At seven, the chef de cuisine, Michel (who is second-in-command to Jean and Pierre), and two assistant cooks were in the kitchen beginning the mise en place, the putting in place of every ingredient and tool that would be needed for the day's cooking. By 7:15, two waiters were ready to serve the 30-odd town customers who come in on their way to work for a café au lait and a croissant.

Meanwhile, Pierre concentrated on the food supplies. This was not a market day, so he took me to his small office for a bout of long-distance telephoning. There was a call from the village of Modane on the Swiss border. The wholesale agent there reported that the fishing boats from Yvoire had been out the night before on the Lake of Geneva and had brought in a good catch of the only kind of blue trout the Troisgros will accept: about two pounds and slightly red inside the gills. They would be shipped live by refrigerated truck and reach Roanne in about six hours.

The next call was from Dublin. There had been a good haul the night before in Galway Bay of the Irish mussels that the brothers think are the best in the world. They would be shipped live, in tanks, by boat to the Breton port of Roscoff, and then by refrigerated truck to Roanne. Another fishing company called from Nantes, at the mouth of the Loire, to report what had been caught that morning in the way of crabs, langoustes, lobsters, scallops, shrimps, etc. An amateur fisherman in Vichy called to say that he had hooked five large salmon in the Allier River the day before and to ask how many he should bring over.

By ten o'clock, the kitchen staff was in full operation and Jean had come down-stairs to take charge. It had been raining early that morning and three schoolboys appeared at the back door of the kitchen carrying bags of live snails they had gathered in the woods. Jean inspected them, weighed them and paid off the boys from the iron cashbox. Two girls arrived to report a noisy mob of frogs on the pond behind the flour mill. Jean showed them the traditional way of catching frogs without damaging them. He brought out a square of bright-red bouclé silk, crumpled and rolled it into a rough ball, attached it to a line about six feet long with a short, whippy rod. He said. "You drop the red ball onto the surface of the pond. The red infuriates the frog, who attacks it and gets its teeth stuck in it. At that precise moment. you jerk up the ball with your right hand and, with your left, catch the frog as it falls."

Precisely at 11, lunch was served to the staff. At 11:30, the five Troisgros children came home from school and joined the family lunch. At noon, a great bell clanged and every man rushed to his post, ready for the first storm of the day. About 60 businessmen came in with their clients and friends. Almost unanimously, they ate two courses and spent about $3.50 per person. No menus were necessary. Maria knows the budget and taste of every one of them. I lunched in the back dining room with the businessmen and ate what most of them were having--an extremely popular Troisgros specialty, Creamed Marinated Chicken in Red Wine Vinegar.

By about two o'clock, the first storm was over. Jean and Pierre took me on a quick tour of the outskirts of Roanne to visit some of the amateur gardeners who grow fruits and vegetables to the Troisgros' specifications. Then we dropped in on their favorite boulanger, Claudius Dufour. Claudius bakes for Troisgros 26 kinds and shapes of breads and rolls and delivers them warm from his ovens five times a day. Next, we drove out to a green valley where we found, almost hidden among the trees, the 200-year-old Moulin de Sainte-Marie. The water in the tiny river was running fast, turning the mill wheel at a clanking clip. The owner, 60-year-old Pierre Debus, a classic French country type who might have stepped straight out of one of Daudet's Lettres de Mon Moulin, showed us the first-quality grade of Canadian durum wheat that he mills for Troisgros into a coarse, unbleached flour.

At dinner that night, I ordered from the least expensive, nine-dollar menu. I began with a terrine of wild rabbit (served in small individual crocks) that Pierre had shot in the forest. There followed one of the supreme Troisgros specialties, mussel soup--a rich fish broth, with cream and saffron, aromatic and glutinous, garnished with wine-poached mussels. For the main course, Veal Kidneys in a Mustard Sauce. With the mussels, I drank a fine white burgundy, a 1966 Pouilly-Fuissé Château Fuissé, and with the kidneys, a 1966 red VolnaySantenots, which the Troisgros serves Burgundian style in a polished pewter jug. After the almost unlimited choices from the cheese and dessert carts, Jean offered, with the coffee, a marc de fromboises, a brandy distilled from raspberries. "At five-thirty in the morning, monsieur," he told me, "I'm driving you the 30 kilometers to St.-Christophe, to help me buy some live Charolais beef."

As the sun rose, we were driving along the beautiful gorge of the Loire, where the river is narrow and white water races among the rocky pools. Already the amateur fishermen were out, some with rods and lines, others with the large, round conical nets. "They're all friends of ours," said Jean. "We'll get the best of what they catch." The valley opened out into the rolling vineyards of the Côtes Roannais, one of the minor classified wine areas, where we called at the vineyard of another Troisgros friend, Paul-Pierre Lutz, so that Jean could order a couple of barrels of Rosé d'Ambierle, the light carafe wine served at the restaurant. Then, over the hills to the village of Iguerande, to order three drums of walnut oil from the 100-year-old pressing plant of Jean Leblanc. Next, to the lovely Romanesque village of Marcigny and the goat farm of Madame Jeannine Shalton, who showed us her herd of snow-white females, all kept in a continuous state of milk production by the industrious activities of a single, lordly, jet-black bouc, who seemed well satisfied with his life's work. We loaded the back of the station wagon with four boxes of the small Marcigny cheeses, each about half the size of a camembert, then headed toward St.-Christophe.

As we approached the village, the air was filled with the distant lowing of thousands of cattle. The Charolais beef sale is the most famous in France. We rounded a bend in the narrow road and suddenly faced a sea of cattle--almost 4000 on sale that day. The owner stands by the head of the animal and firmly proclaims its magnificent qualities--even if it's the scruffiest beast you ever saw. The buyer walks around the animal, prodding it with a stick and loudly pointing out its faults. The seller asks double what he expects to get. The buyer offers half of what he expects to pay. Then the violent trading begins.

A beef animal bought by the Troisgros brothers will usually weigh about 1000 pounds. They take only the contre-filets, the two long backstrips of lean meat, which include all the best steak and roasting cuts--about ten percent of the carcass. The rest is at once resold to retail butchers. Before leaving St.-Christophe, soon after nine A.M., we had a "meat-handlers' breakfast" at the Restaurant Chenaux, next door to the slaughterhouse. The place was jammed with about 300 of the brawniest men one has ever seen, most of them in blue-denim shirts that hung down to their knees. We started with a half-liter pot of a powerful, rough red Rhône wine. Then came a mountainous dish of beef stew. The meat seemed very fresh. Next, a well-aged Marcigny goat cheese, which had a certain gastronomic relationship with the beef. The smell reminded me of an unventilated cattle barn on a hot day. This monster meal cost a dollar.

Back in Roanne in time for lunch (but hardly hungry), I asked if I might kibitz with the kitchen crew. The six cooks are commanded by Jean, Pierre, the chef de cuisine, Michel, and the chef pâtissier, André. Jean is mainly at the stoves. Pierre cuts all the meat. Michel takes care of the fish and the sauces. At the same time, each of the bosses is inspecting, picking at and tasting everything. A bowl of salad is ready to go into the dining room. Pierre looks at it, pulls out a leaf and tastes the dressing, then roundly bawls out the boy who made it, throws the salad into the garbage and orders a rush replacement.

One has no feeling of anything being measured or cost-accounted. Mounds of butter, jugs of thick cream and bottles of wine are everywhere and seem to be added to everything in unlimited quantities. Everyone communicates continuously by shouting--ill-tempered and tough shouting when the going is rough and mistakes are made, jocular and satiric shouting when things go well. The practical joke is never far below the surface. André walks across the kitchen carrying a tower of empty aluminum cake pans. Pierre, at the butcher's block, flashes out his foot and trips him. The deafening crash of the pans sets the whole kitchen to a roar of laughter. André, not amused, yells at the boys, "Pick 'em up!" and stalks off to his corner.

As each order is yelled in and confirmed by Jean's answering shout, he takes down the proper pan for that order and sets it, empty, as a reminder, on the stove. He claims his system is foolproof, but by the time there are ten empty pans, he has been known to mutter, "What the bloody hell is supposed to go into this one?" At moments one senses, perhaps, the secret of the lifelong relationship between the two brothers. Pierre has the force and the fury; he does the bawling out. The boys watch him with a certain fear. Jean has the charm. He flashes his smile. He jumps in with soothing words. The boys watch him with adoration.

The pressures mount to a peak. The orders are like a barrage of machine-gun fire. One has the vague feeling of a crew of white-coated seamen trying to keep their ship afloat in a hurricane. The blare of noise, the figures rushing hither and thither, the irresistible chaos of enticing smells, the heat and spitting of the frying, the clang of pots, the bloompbloomp of chopping knives, all beat down with enveloping force until one feels dizzy.

Yet, in reality, everything is proceeding normally, everyone is efficiently absorbed. A boy is quickly shelling a bowl of beautiful, pink crayfish. Michel is adding a shower of bright-green sorrel to a brilliantly yellow sauce. André is making patterns with peach halves on a tart shell. Pierre watches everything and misses nothing. He could take over any job, from anyone, at any moment, and do it better. Everyone knows this and the effect is both disciplinary anti exhilarating. One feels sure that if Jean suddenly felt himself fainting from the heat of his fires, he would, before letting himself fall to the floor, take the piece of beef out of the oven to avoid its being overcooked.

Lunch was over, the afternoon was restful and, by dinnertime, I was again ready to face the joyous riches of the Troisgros' cuisine. On the third evening, I ordered from the $12 menu. Since this is the dinner chosen by about 90 percent of the tourists, it includes most of the Troisgros' specialties listed in the Guide Michelin. My meal began with a dish of pink, cold poached crayfish on a bed of chopped green leaves, lightly set off with a tomato-tinged yellow mayonnaise. Next, the dish that has been most often acclaimed by French gourmets as Troisgros' most brilliant creation: a thin escalope of fresh salmon, covered by a faintly acid sauce made with sorrel, vermouth, white wine, lemon juice and copious quantities of butter and cream. "The trick is to add the finely chopped sorrel not more than ten seconds before you pour the sauce over the salmon," Jean pointed out. "The sorrel melts, but its flavor is captured." The main course was an entrecôte of Charolais beef, with a complicated red beaujolais sauce, thickened with beef marrow. The wine with the fish was a 1964 white burgundy, Puligny-Montrachet, while the beef deserved and got a magnum of 1961 Chambertin-Clos de Bèze--a great wine.

After cheeses and desserts, Jean offered, with the coffee, a privately distilled, unlabeled mart made from wild plums, which, in finesse and richness, made many a cognac seem weak and uninteresting. The meal was a gastronomic triumph.

The following day, after breakfast, I reluctantly packed my bags. It was time for me to leave. Jean and Pierre came up to my room and said that they would all be greatly honored if I would have my farewell lunch with the family and staff in the private dining room. I felt equally honored by the invitation. It was a meal of perfect simplicity--a fitting end to a memorable visit. There was a salad of the last local green beans and tomatoes of the season. There was a whole pike, caught that morning in the gorge of the Loire, served with la Sauce à la Manière de Grand-maman--creamy, lemony, with the faint taste of shallots and speckled with the green of fresh tarragon. Then a beautifully balanced Alguillette de Boeuf, a stew with sweet baby carrots and small boiled potatoes. For the wine, they reminded me of my visit to Monsieur Lutz by serving his charming Rosé d'Ambierle. Then came the Marcigny cheese to remind me of Madame Shalton's goats. Then the last raspberries and strawberries of the season--and champagne for the final toasts.

I raised my glass and gently goaded them: "Here's to your future. You are world-famous, you have more business than you can possibly handle. Here's to your rebuilding this place as a 300-seat restaurant. You have had large financial offers from Paris. Here's to your opening a great restaurant there."

Jean laughed: "If I wanted to be a businessman, I wouldn't be a chef."

Pierre said: "I want to stay in the kitchen. I enjoy cooking with my brother."

The big bell clanged for 12 o'clock. Everyone hurried off to his battle station. I was left alone in the private dining room with papa Jean-Baptiste. For a few moments, we sipped our champagne in silence. Then I asked: "What do you think is the essence of the Troisgros philosophy?"

"When my boys were young," he said, "we used to go into the country together and, when we saw the Charolais cattle in the fields, I said, 'Look, how they are at peace. They are at one with the earth--in perfect harmony.' We try to achieve that harmony in this house. I believe our clients sense that harmony in the foods they eat here and the wines they drink here. Our essence, monsieur, is that our cuisine reflects the marvel of the earth."

Is this the greatest restaurant in the world? My mother once told me that she took me to my first restaurant when I was two years old. Since that day, I calculate that I have eaten in 12,474 restaurants around the world. As far as I can remember, not one of them was ever as good as Troisgros.