Two frogs Ã la carte.
The eel... Are you doing a good job with the eel?
It's for Marc.
We won't cut it in half. We'll leave it whole.
I was born in 1958.
And the Salmon and Sorrel was created by my father and uncle in 1962.
Salmon and Sorrel is the dish that made the reputation of my father's restaurant.
It changed French cuisine.
My entire childhood, I saw Salmon and Sorrel again and again.
Every family get together we would have Salmon and Sorrel.
Then I started working with my father.
Clients would greet me by asking, "How is Pierre?"
I felt the shadow of the past.
For 15 years I was frustrated.
There is the weight of history in this restaurant
that has had three Michelin stars for 47 years.
I was cooking Salmon and Sorrel every day.
This is a dish that was innovative in its time.
But my vision is turned towards the future.
I needed to free myself from the past.
And then, when my dad gave me
the opportunity to be in charge of the kitchen,
I decided...
no more Salmon and Sorrel in the restaurant.
We have an order, Ã la carte.
One giardiniera, one eel with saltimbocca, two frogs.
Will follow with two spicy lamb, please.
Oui.
We will have at least one more plate.
Oui.
- Are the Robelins here yet? - No, Chef.
- Let's give them a beautiful service. - Yes, Chef.
Maison Troisgros was established in 1930.
This restaurant, along with Maison Bocuse,
has the longest record in France for three Michelin stars.
Between 1960 and 1970,
Maison Troisgros launched what was known as nouvelle cuisine
with their Salmon and Sorrel,
which earned it the title Best Restaurant in the World.
Many generations of the Troisgros family have lived above the restaurant.
But today, when you enter Maison Troisgros,
you are entering a universe that belongs to Michel Troisgros.
He is working in the kitchen with his son, César.
Michel is someone of immense curiosity
which pushes him to discover other cultures and flavors,
all of which he puts into his cuisine.
You can't anticipate how moved you'll be by Michel's cuisine.
Everything is so small and fragile,
but when you eat it, there is this intoxicating power.
But it's not just about his cuisine.
It's also a story about what we are able to do
when faced with our doubts, our fears,
in order to move past what our parents did.
This is incredible! Dad! Dad!
He's gotta come see this!
No, wait. I started without you.
Let's make a broccoli white truffle dish.
When I start a dish,
the idea comes from a desire to work with a product.
A dish of broccoli with anchovies and mushrooms,
that would be really good.
I think we can only innovate with knowledge.
We'll go see Gunter, but I don't know what he has.
- Gunter. - Gunter.
Gunter.
It's simple to design a cuisine which is interesting and personal.
- The one I tried was delicious. - Very good.
But when there is no knowledge, everything else is meaningless.
Oh, wow! The aroma!
They're not ripe yet.
A few years ago, I was at a restaurant in Kanazawa, Japan,
and I enjoyed eel which was skewered and then grilled on only one side.
I discovered a pleasure in the crunchiness of the eel.
I wanted to recreate that.
Let's go.
The raw ingredient drives the research.
First, taste the eel for what it is.
Try it with and without its skin.
With and without the fat.
With and without the bones.
In pieces or filleted.
Skewered on its length or its width.
I never know how many people will work on it.
My son César, myself, maybe even my pastry chef.
And all of this analysis
will lead me to draw conclusions and make a choice...
without the guarantee of results.
But all the mistakes and errors,
they push me to keep going and going.
I do not give up.
I'm not satisfied until we come up with a new dish.
And that gives me energy every day.
When a customer arrives at Maison Troisgros,
we invite them into our kitchen.
For us, it's part of a ritual.
And we know how much it pleases the customer.
But also, we're telling a story.
It allows me, César and my team
to tell the history of French cuisine and Maison Troisgros.
My grandfather was a restaurateur.
He was bold, ambitious, a visionary.
In 1930, he borrowed money and bought this restaurant.
It was a hotel and a restaurant.
Since there was a train station close by, customers could arrive by train
and walk across the street to the restaurant.
During that time, inns started becoming very popular restaurants...
to the point that these restaurants were the first ones
to become internationally known.
Jean-Baptiste was the first to begin the legacy.
His sons, Pierre and Jean Troisgros, took over for Jean-Baptiste.
Pierre and Jean, with their different personalities...
made Maison Troisgros one of the most renowned restaurants on the planet.
In the mid-1950s, the symbol of the heaviness of French cuisine
was cooking everything until it became brown.
Vegetables were overcooked.
No bright colors at all.
That was the standard. Heavy dishes were the way.
In 1960, my brother and I were on vacation
in the Basque Country during salmon season.
The Basque people eat salmon undercooked.
We realized that when salmon is undercooked,
it keeps all the freshness and smoothness.
We decided to cook the fish for just a few seconds in a pan.
We used a light sauce, which was new and different.
We were adventurers trying to discover a new style.
But it was quite impossible to serve an undercooked fish in France.
Clients would send it back and say, "Learn your job! Cook this fish!"
One day, Mr. Courtine, a famous journalist at Le Monde,
came into the restaurant with my father.
We told them that we had a new dish...
Salmon and Sorrel.
And in Le Monde,
Mr. Courtine titled his story about the dish, "Finally, a Smart Salmon!"
And "smart salmon" attracted many people. Everyone wanted to know why it was smart.
That was the beginning of my career.
This dish became symbolic of French cuisine.
Society was evolving.
There was a need to break with
some French culinary traditions.
And Pierre and Jean Troisgros were among the first to understand this.
Salmon and Sorrel ended up getting
this restaurant three stars.
In the '60s and '70s,
the Troisgros brothers were celebrities.
It's a job I wouldn't change. I didn't choose this job.
My father imposed it on me. There would be no question.
I was 14 and my dad said, "You and your brother will be cooks."
Jean was the serious one. He spent his time in the kitchen.
Pierre was a jovial guy.
He liked to be out talking to the customers.
And the two worked together harmoniously.
People came from all over the country and the world
to feast and celebrate.
I grew up with my entire family living above the kitchen.
There was my mother, my father, my uncle and my aunt.
Also my grandfather, Jean-Baptiste, and my grandmother...
and five of us children all lived above the kitchen.
Just the family took up half the rooms in the hotel.
When we were kids, the wine cellar offered us
a labyrinth of possibilities.
We would play hide and seek.
The others could always be found, but not me.
My brother, sister and cousins would move onto another game,
but I would still be there.
I remember the smells and the sounds of the kitchen.
I could hear the intensity, the stress,
the emotion that would burst forth.
I was sure I wanted to devote my life to cooking.
Mmm... It seduced me.
We're building a new restaurant
which is not the same as the one in Roanne.
Yes, but at the same time,
we follow the natural shape of the property, along its length.
Come here, César. Come here, look!
There I'm entering the kitchen, right?
Over there is the champagne cellar. There's the wine cellar.
And we'll put up a porch roof above this door.
Marie-Pierre and I met
when we were in the same class at culinary school.
I was 16 and she was 17. I was too young for her.
She was brilliant in class and I wasn't.
- Daniel, will we see nature? - In nature?
Besides cooking classes,
I was not a genius in accounting, math classes.
I didn't take school seriously.
Marie-Pierre and I liked each other right away.
I think my motorbike helped me in seducing her.
I think that was it.
In school, Marie-Pierre worked on the weekends to pay her school fees.
She had no choice
because her parents did not help her like mine were helping me.
I liked her force of character.
That helped me grow up.
I stopped being lazy and started taking school seriously.
I worked very hard every day to improve my schoolwork.
Without Marie-Pierre, I don't think I would have made it this far.
She opened my eyes to the world beyond Roanne.
After graduating culinary school,
Marie-Pierre and I traveled the world together.
First we traveled across France, where I met great chefs.
And then we left France and traveled across Europe and Japan.
I had just returned from a trip to Italy
where I was inspired by Fontana, the painter.
He had this style of contrast with textures and colors.
And so, I wanted to create a dish
that contrasts truffle with milk.
It is very hard to make a dish with just two ingredients.
A great dish is recognized by its simplicity.
the milk and its softness,
and its opposite, the truffle, which has an earthy and powerful taste.
But taste complements what the eye sees.
When I served it for the first time,
at the table, I lacerated the truffle immediately.
It opens up immediately and the black color is visible.
It was surprising.
At the moment that I sliced through with the knife,
the contrast of the white milk and the black truffle
made me think of Fontana's work.
The world fascinates me.
Over the years, I came to realize that traveling with Marie-Pierre
had become necessary.
It enriches me
and inspires me to re-invent my cuisine.
In the winter of 1983, Marie-Pierre and I were back in Roanne.
We were getting ready to open a restaurant in Sydney, Australia.
I already had my Australian visa and we had a place to live.
And then my uncle Jean died on a tennis court.
My father was stunned by the unexpected events.
Jean was only 57.
It was the end of the story of the Troisgros brothers.
The clients and the media were doubtful
about the future of the restaurant.
Even with my father still there.
They said, "With one of the brothers gone, Maison Troisgros will never be the same."
Claude, my brother, owned a restaurant in Rio.
Georges, my cousin, was working in New York.
And I was here.
I never imagined that we would live in Roanne.
We wanted to get away from here.
We had told ourselves that nothing is better than freedom.
But somebody needed to help my father.
Michel was right there
when my brother, Jean Troisgros, passed away.
Michel, out of a real family spirit, saw that I was alone...
and he decided he could help.
After Jean died, the years went by.
There was the birth of Marion, our eldest daughter,
then our sons, César and Léo.
And I was working under my father.
During these years,
I had disagreements with my father,
not only in the kitchen,
but also about my position in the restaurant, about its future.
The things he was for, I was against, and the things I was for, he was against.
We didn't have the same goals or tastes.
He wanted me to be like him.
And I'm not like him.
It's from yesterday. And these are the two from today.
Well, we'll figure out something to do with it.
Okay, so let's try that. Agreed.
Let's go.
This restaurant was all about
a time that had passed by.
Marie-Pierre and I, we had moments of doubt where we wanted to leave.
It was 1995. My father was close to 70.
We'd been there 13 years.
I was almost 40.
It was time that we took charge of the restaurant.
We told ourselves,
"We are grown-ups and we're keeping the legacy."
That was when we said out loud
that we either take over or we are leaving.
Passing the torch is not easy
because there is always someone who wants to come in
and there's someone else who doesn't want to go.
My father thought it was too early to leave.
He had to close the book of his professional journey.
For an artist to withdraw from the scene is a difficult thing.
What's the use of caramelizing it? Because I think it's still too thick.
Michel Troisgros had just taken over the restaurant,
and he was in front of a blank page.
"What am I going to do? Should I revolutionize the restaurant?
Should I be true to myself?"
The pear, the quince, the ginger and the sesame go well together.
There was pressure from Michelin and from the customers.
By making any small changes,
he would be in danger of losing three stars.
Yes, it's very good.
From the moment my father retired,
I wanted to do something different.
I was very hesitant, very afraid.
I was constantly reminded of the weight of the past.
It wasn't just about fried frog legs, like back in the day.
It wasn't about escargot with garlic butter.
I needed to scare myself a little bit.
In order to find my personality as a chef...
I had to leave my past behind
and break free from the shackles of my family's legacy.
So I removed Salmon and Sorrel from the menu.
I got reprimanded by the customers, saying, "You can't touch this."
"It's sacred!"
"Michel doesn't understand anything." "He's spitting on history."
I heard it all.
Customers were not ready for the change.
I had to dive into the deep end and see what I had in me.
- Are you adding a little more? - What?
- Are you adding a bit more salt? - No.
Is that enough?
Uh...
A little chunk like this.
But you know, by stirring, I can get you some.
When I was 14 or 15,
I wanted to work in any other field besides cuisine.
Not because I did not like cooking,
but because I was getting tired of the same old lecture.
Everyone was always saying how I would be a chef like my father.
I wanted to work in the music industry,
despite the fact that I had no prior knowledge of it.
And I ended up getting hired as a sound engineer.
It didn't take me long to realize that I didn't like it.
The environment was not my thing.
I started questioning my future.
I was also working part-time at the restaurant
just to make myself some pocket money to go to the movies, buy myself a bicycle.
I felt something comforting in the kitchen.
My father asked,
"Do you think you would like to take on more responsibilities with us?"
And I wanted to.
I decided that all I wanted was to be in the kitchen.
Considering the fact that I was born in a culinary environment...
it was inevitable.
Can you give us some space to work, please?
What are you thinking about?
I was thinking we could do something
like when we did white truffle broccoli.
And replace the white truffle.
Taking over a restaurant is not easy.
There was less coverage in the media and it wasn't very busy.
But Michel had the urge to rise up,
beyond the past.
They're nice, very firm.
Anchovies?
- Like this? - Yes.
During the years 1997, 1998, I put myself to work.
I was having fun creating...
developing, taking risks.
For example, Japan had infiltrated me.
With my dish of warm oysters,
I wanted to combine sushi rice
with a broth with vinegar
to give it an interesting acidity.
This was very different from French cuisine.
This was different from the cooking of my father.
It was one of the first dishes that helped me move forward.
The dishes that I was designing had a taste of somewhere else.
It was as if someone from here went away and then came back even better.
Customers traveled a lot
and were looking for new and different cuisines.
With time...
customers were not coming in for the old dishes anymore.
The younger customers
were more open to new things.
They were pushing me to go further.
Troisgros was growing and attracting connoisseurs
from all over the world.
I did it without Salmon and Sorrel.
At that moment, I realized
that the tradition of Troisgros is to change.
The moment I understood
that this movement towards the future allows survival,
I didn't hesitate for a second. It was all about creation and change.
That was my salvation.
In the years 2012, 2013, César was in the kitchen with me.
He was very curious to see the Salmon and Sorrel.
He had heard about it, but had never seen it.
Questions were coming in,
and I sensed a young new take on this dish,
a dish that, in my eyes, had been overused.
And I felt the desire to communicate to my son
the dish that represents
the history of our family.
The moment I put the salmon in a hot pan, the countdown starts.
I throw my raw sorrel in the salty cream sauce,
which has a hint of lemon.
- Get ready. - Yes, Chef.
The salmon is cooked for 15 seconds on each side.
At the same time, I finish my cream sauce,
which is a shallot reduction, wine and smoked fish stock.
- Lemon here. - Yes, Chef.
This is an immediate dish, like sushi in Japan.
Sushi seems simple,
and yet nothing is more difficult to achieve.
Salmon and Sorrel is the same.
I take my warm plate and put the sauce on it.
Then it's time to add the salmon.
Every second the salmon is on the plate is important.
The time between the kitchen and the client's table
should be 12 seconds.
The time between when the customer gets his plate
and the first bite should be six to seven seconds.
If this goes wrong, it is the quality that suffers.
This establishment is distinguished by the way it constantly renews itself.
Salmon and Sorrel is the emblem of this renewal.
It serves as a link between our past and the future.
I don't have the shadow of the past hanging over me anymore.
It was time for me to make peace with it.
Good.
Where am I going, César?
Uh...
- Am I going back on the main road? - Yes.
Hold on, I don't know if I closed...
Okay, let's go.
The Troisgros cuisine has evolved.
But we still have to take another huge step forward.
I'm always looking towards the future.
I'm always focused on what I can do
to continuously reinvent Maison Troisgros.
By chance, we discovered an abandoned farm.
Well, almost abandoned. There were cows there.
And we acquired it.
It will still be Troisgros, but a new one.
We will be leaving Roanne.
Together, we are completely relocating to a new place.
We will have to redo everything,
reimagine everything and rebuild everything.
It will be César, with me by his side, that will undertake all of this.
"Dead leaves must be picked with a shovel.
Memories and regrets, too."
Let's stop here.
Shall we start eating the ham?
Let's eat! Let's eat! Let's eat!
When I think about this move that we're making,
I can sense the passing of the torch coming.
César is destined to take over the restaurant.
But I also have another son, Léo, who is also a cook.
We're waiting on Léo's journey to see where he ends up.
My brother is going to spend his life here.
But I'm too young to say yet.
I want to discover the world.
Just like my father did.
It's too soon to write
that the duo of the Troisgros brothers will be reborn.
But at the same time, I think about it.
I don't speak it out loud.
The hardest thing will be to outdo my parents.
It's not over.
This story is not over.