‘Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros’ Review – The Handcrafted Delights Of French Cuisine

There’s something starkly simplistic about the Troisgros family’s cooking. Michel Troisgros and his two sons César and Léo run three restaurants in central France under the Troisgros name. Their specialty is simplicity, nothing more than a handful of a few ingredients yet prepared in a way that changes the way we think about those ingredients. By chance, filmmaker Frederick Wiseman visited the main restaurant that is featured in Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros and expressed interest in learning more about the culinary family. Wiseman’s approach to documentary film fits well within the strength of Troisgros’s simplicity or rather, they complement each other tastefully with a shared passion for knowledge. Wiseman makes his films to learn about the inner workings of certain places. His films, Menus-Plaisir chief among them within this example, become these semi-tangible maps tracing over what he’s learned with the aim that others observe as he has and fall into a fascination in a mutual fashion.

Wiseman’s film has the same airy and calm feel as the inner workings of the kitchen that Michel and César oversee at Le Bois sans Feuilles. His editing artistically and aptly accentuates the open spaces on the beautiful property surrounding the hotel-restaurant Michel owns. Wiseman’s signature voiceover-free footage pairs with the gorgeous, tranquil countryside positioned within sight from the Troisgros dining space, and settling between the thoughts behind each menu item candid dialogue between staff and client about color in the noble values the culinary family upholds.

Michel brings guests to witness the kitchen in operation, explaining how everything is open with no walls or dividers between cooks working different jobs. As Michel puts it, everyone working underneath the roof of Michel and César’s kitchen can communicate easily with each other without having to raise their voice. César, the head chef, often communicates with a look rather than having to speak or raise his voice to reach across the room.

The inner workings of Le Bois sans Feuilles function contrary to the widespread perception of how restaurants operate, especially within the intense environment of what we think 3-Michelin-starred restaurants in a post-Food Network world look like. A cook misses an important step in preparing a dish but once Michel catches it, he doesn’t dwell on the fact that a mistake was made. Michel instead takes the time to set that cook aside and fill the gap of knowledge they missed rather than berate them for their unintentional blunder as popular culture highlights so viscerally. Attention and communication become evident as the underlying principles of the Troisgros family as it does in Wiseman’s film and solidifies this as the perfect presentation of a family’s passionate enterprise.

Not all time is spent within the walls of each restaurant the family owns (of which there are three within close distance of each other) as Michel, César, and Léo take time to visit the farmers and artisans they do business with and receive their ingredients from. Through inquiring about the processes used to bring their elements to the table, and each supplier going through their process, Wiseman and the audience can appreciate the care taken in virtually every aspect of cultivation. When Michel meets with a vintner to see their new process of growing grapes, he makes an observation pointing to the utmost importance the soil holds for the ultimate quality of the grape in taste and quality. Michel refers back to a stock farmer who has said the exact same thing, healthy soil being the lifeblood of the process of raising animals in good health for milk & cheese production.

Michel Troisgros in his culinary studies focused on farm-to-table practices, and in the closure of his family home repurposed as the main family restaurant, Michel and his sister Marie-Pierre chose the Roanne countryside for its new home. Soil has a connection to each member of the Troisgros family in an analogous fashion; the very earth each restaurant shares holds in common the practices of their family’s traditions and as new fertile ground becomes introduced to the soil that came before new possibilities. Although the original restaurant within their family home no longer houses their concoctions it is of the same terrain that contributes to the signature tastes and textures of how they forged ahead in the gastronomic culture. And while great distances can in fact offer different qualities of its earth, Menus-Plaisirs brings a feeling of home away from home on solid ground.

Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Zipporah Films. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNsTyFX-1o8]