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| "We shot for seven weeks. And we were pretty much there 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes more," director Frederick Wiseman told Screen Slate. (Supplied: Madman) |
By Jamie Tram
For a documentary centred on the behind-the-scenes travails of fine dining, Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros is immediately notable for its absence of culinary clichés.
Grandstanding egos, bubbling chaos and blistering tempers are virtually absent. The kitchen soundscape never rises above a light percussive flow. Even amid the flurry of roaring stoves and rapid-fire dicing, barely a drop of sweat can be glimpsed throughout the entire run time.
Le Bois sans Feuilles is the latest iteration of legendary French restaurant La Maison Troigros, which has held onto three Michelin stars for a record 69 years.
The spectacle being offered isn't just of food porn — it's competency porn.
The open kitchen set-up that fixes each worker in plain, inescapable view, feels akin to a 19th century operating theatre. Armed with tweezers and a practiced dexterity, chefs huddle over grids of plates, twisting and layering and contouring each prepared element — kidneys and brains included — until the completed dish emerges.
When the restaurant was still operating out of Roanne, 90km north-west of gastronomic capital Lyon, second-generation brothers Jean and Pierre turned their parents' institution into an epicentre of nouvelle cuisine, whose philosophy gave precedence to fresh ingredients, invention and a delicate touch. Today, the restaurant operates in rural Ouches, with its seamless, ceiling-length windows gazing onto the surrounding farmland.
That same doctrine has been dutifully followed by Pierre's son, Michel Troisgros — now the stately patriarch of his family's restaurant dynasty — and Michel's own sons, César and Leo.
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| Michel Troisgros (centre) has played a major role in La Maison Troigros since 1983, restoring the original restaurant after the deaths of his father and uncle. (Supplied: Madman) |
The minutiae of their practice is affectionately and attentively detailed: crisp artichoke hearts are paired with lamb, garlic flowers and sage; John Dory fillets are sliced into petals, decorated with squid ink, and floated atop green curry; strands of puff pastry are coiled into a nest, upon which trompe-l'oeil dessert eggs rest.
For a working environment with a sky-high margin of error, the inevitable mistakes only amount to minor, contained inconveniences. When a junior cook neglects to drain veal brains of their blood vessels, Michel directs him to a pair of hefty cooking bibles, from which Michel narrates the correct preparation of the dish from the page. The lesson is delivered in classically paternal fashion: encouraging, if lightly condescending.
Director Frederick Wiseman, who remains startlingly energised at 95 years of age, has long occupied an elder statesman status in his own artistic field. Produced with a minimal crew (often with Wiseman doubling as sound recordist), his films relentlessly eschew the kind of conventions that have become synonymous with the documentary form.
His trademark style — an unobtrusive, fly-on-the-wall perspective unencumbered by music, titles, voiceover or talking heads — can have a hypnotically immersive effect.
His films bristle with personality and pointed commentary in how he weaves between institutions (spanning New York's welfare offices to the National Gallery of London) and the bureaucracies behind them. The incensing failures of dilapidated government services and utopic glimpses of their potential are contrasted across class lines.
With Menus-Plaisirs, his 47th feature and counting, Wiseman has seemingly captured the closest one can get to paradise — at least for those who can afford it.
Across its four-hour run time (at home, the film is likely best enjoyed with a charcuterie board and a self-imposed intermission), the director's curiosity takes the film to local fromageries, farms and greenhouses around the verdant countryside.
Speaking in inadvertently metaphorical terms, more than one practitioner expounds the significance of the soil on which they stand, and its importance in maintaining a "virtuous cycle". It's a small-scale ecosystem sustained by formidable passion, sustainable practices and technical rigour; the multifaceted aging process for goat's cheese extends back to the feeding of organic cow's milk to baby kids.
One can draw parallels between the pampered goats and César's own offspring, an infant daughter with a taste for mushroom pasta — the foundations of the Troisgros dynasty continue to be carefully nurtured.
Menus-Plaisirs relishes in the creative synchronicity shared between Michel and his kin, with the testing and discussion of new menu items kicking off a lively volley of ideas, feedback, and technical considerations.
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| Michel's father, Pierre, and uncle, Jean, transformed their parents' institution into an epicentre of nouvelle cuisine, whose philosophy gave precedence to fresh ingredients, invention and a delicate touch. (Supplied: Madman) |
The film's abundant pleasures are nonetheless infused with an awareness of the immense privilege on display, evoking the inherent tension between artist and benefactor.
At the front of house, an army of waiters (accompanied by Michel himself) are tasked with entertaining the kind of patrons who can afford the €350 seasonal menu (or reserve a €15,000 bottle of wine).
One customer probes the staff about the presence of sulphites in wine, while another invokes Balzac in a philosophical tangent while ordering. Try not to cringe as an Australian businessman attempts to appraise the wine, or waves his hand above the plate to take in the aroma.
Most of us will never land a reservation at such an institution — but for those with the appetite for an epic-length run time, the film lovingly dishes up one of the purest, most joyful expressions of culinary creativity ever committed to screen.
First published at ABC News, January 5, 2025
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