Troisgros
Troisgros interior shot courtesy of their website
Troisgros Review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin Stars
+One of the best dining rooms around - modern with a striking design. Visting at lunch is a must where you can enjoy all of that natural light coming in through the windows.
+The main course, duck, was one of the finest duck dishes I have ever had and a testament to what the kitchen is capable of when it nails a dish.
-Some courses were uneven and had imbalanced flavors
Score: 91/100
Verdict: It is hard for me to fully review Troisgros. There was a sublime duck dish and the rest was largely forgettable and indistinct in my memories. Besides the duck, the most memorable part of the meal was the new dining room, its floor-to-ceiling windows bathing the room in natural light at lunch and giving a great look at the hotel and restaurants’ natural surroundings.
The lunch menu was definitely the wallet-friendly option - four courses with paired wines for €160 is quite reasonable, especially with a dinner menu price tag that would make all but the most expensive restaurants blush. Given the difficulty of getting to the restaurant (it is in the middle of nowhere France) maybe I should have gone for a longer menu. Beyond being a shorter experience, many of the courses seemed to be geared towards the lower price point of the lunch menu which is not an issue per se but may have been a reason the meal lacked the same magic as the setting.
Ignoring all of this, there was brilliance on the menu - the crust on the duck and the accompanying sauce was ingenious. At the same time, there were some real missteps - the same duck dish had a marmalade substance that was better off not being eaten. Putting all this together was I glad I went? Yes, but in retrospect, I am not sure I would have made the same effort to make it to its out of the way location.
Price I paid: €160 for lunch menu with paired wines
Value: 15/20 (lunch menu only)
Troisgros Background
Troisgros is one of the most storied restaurants in France, earning its third Michelin star all the way back in 1968 and keeping them ever since. Perhaps even more impressive than keeping the stars for 50+ years is how the restaurant did it - by being a family business in the truest sense of the word. The restaurant’s initial success came at the hands of two brothers, Pierre and Jean Troisgros who worked in the kitchen while their father Jean-Baptise ran the front of the house. Under their stewardship, Troisgros not only earned three stars in the Michelin guide but became one of the most famous restaurants in all of France and among the leaders of the nouvelle cuisine movement. After Jean passed away, Pierre brought his son, Michel, into the kitchen. The restaurant’s storied tradition continued as father and son worked hand in hand for 13 some odd years before Pierre retired in the mid-90s, handing the keys to the kitchen over to Michel fully. There was no blip under Michel who dually maintained both the restaurant’s three stars and its spot among the best tables in France. Today, while Michel is still very much involved in the day-to-day operations of the business, the kitchen is run by his son César who is only 35 years old but has kept the three stars just the same. For more information on the Troisgros family, I highly recommend checking out their episode on Chef’s Table France which does far more justice for this storied family than I can in a few sentences.
The building and dining room is stunning. I can’t emphasize this enough and it is almost reason enough to visit, particularly lunch when the natural light pours in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and creates the effect of dining outside while you are actually inside. I don’t know what the former restaurant looked like but whoever designed the new one did a job worthy of such a famous restaurant.
A meal at Troisgros costs a lot. The regular tasting menu comes in at €300 or €500 with matching wines. A la carte is also offered with course running €75-€100 with the exception of dessert which costs €35. While this is not out of line with say Paris it is a bit higher than you’d expect (although in line with the nearby Pic). The one pocket of value on the menu is the lunch menu which is only served on weekdays and costs €160 including matching wines. This is what I went with and it was definitely a good value.
What I ate at Troisgros
The meal started off with a pair of amuses - a small crisp filled with local cheese and a tart filled with foie gras and topped with artichoke. Both bites also incorporated balsamic vinegar and some fresh black pepper which added a pleasant zing. Almost immediately after these bites, "cornbread" and a country loaf were dropped off with some excellent butter. Both the nibbles and the bread were enjoyable but not jaw-dropping. As an American, the "cornbread" was particularly funny as it was not cornbread in the way I think of it but a more literal translation where corn kernels were grounded up and used to give some texture to the bread.
The first course appeared to be a concession to the low cost of the lunch menu and consisted of a potato flower with shaved cured fish roe and onion petal. A beautifully prepared potato, fanned out similar to a rose, was combined with some cured fish roe. The potato’s flavor matched its stunning presentation, perfectly seasoned with gorgeous crispy edges. Unfortunately, the preparation of the onion pedals ruined the dish. I can't recall what they were marinated in but the flavor obliterated everything else in the dish and frankly left an unpleasant taste on the palate.
The seafood course was John Dory with mushrooms, cabbage, and mushroom sauce. A beautifully plated dish with each small fillet of steamed John Dory wrapped around a raw mushroom. The dory and mushroom were then paired with some diced cabbage and a mushroom cream sauce poured tableside. While the plating was intricate, the flavors were not. The fish and mushroom combo worked well enough but the sauce was merely good and not great. A fair enough dish but it would have been more enjoyable had I not had a much more memorable preparation of John Dory at Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville de Crissier only a few days earlier. Interestingly enough, I have seen versions of this dish which also featured black truffles folded in with the fish and mushrooms. Not practicial at the Troisgros lunch price point but maybe it would have resulted in a better overall dish.
The main course was duck with sweet and sour sauce, cabbage. Crusted in cocoa and chilies and served with a sweet and sour sauce that incorporated the duck’s juices and a bit of dijon, this was quite possibly the best duck dish I have ever had. Quality duck sublimely cooked paired with a perfectly balanced sauce. At the very least this easily bested the famous duck from Eleven Madison Park by a comfortable margin. While it was surprising to see the kitchen use the 'flower' presentation flourish twice in a four-course meal, the cabbage went well with the sauce and brought its own flavor to the dish from the slight char on the edges. The only quibble was the marmalade like substance in the foreground of the plate - this was flavored with dijon and quite frankly overpowering. The dish would have been better by omitting this component completely which was exactly what I did, leaving it untouched on the plate. The duck was served with a side of simply prepared sugar snap peas from the restaurant gardens. They did not add much to the dish but were pleasant enough by themselves. If nothing else, this duck was a triumph from Michel and Caesar Troisgros and the rest of the kitchen.
Dessert was a Troisgros classic of “Eggs” filled with creme glaise, pineapple and kumquat. While appearance would say otherwise, Troisgros did not serve a pair of boiled eggs for dessert. Instead, these eggs consisted of a white chocolate shell filled with yogurt as a facsimile for the egg whites and a fruit sauce (pineapple for one, kumquat for the other) for the yolk. One of the rare occurrences where the chef was able to create a very clever presentation while also delivering a convincing dish flavor-wise with the fruit filling providing great sweetness and acid to go with the yogurt and shell.
Stray thoughts
Service was attentive and efficient with the kitchen getting through the four courses in just a shade under 1.5 hours - the only lapse being an unusually long time between when the bill was provided and when they returned to allow me to pay after following up with them.
Not necessarily a fault with the service but all of the staff walked quite briskly through the dining room to the point that it was noticeable. I was in the back corner and this resulted in a frequent and comical sight where the waiter, carrying a tray to clear the dishes, would walk very quickly and with great purpose from the service station to my table. Observing that I was still eating, they would then turn around and scurry back to the service station. This pointless back and forth was repeated every few minutes until they actually needed to clear the table.