French impressions
There's a rumour going around that France's culinary crown is under threat. Other countries, such as Spain, are emerging with a more challenging food offering, some say, and, according to a recent article in the New York Times, the food in France's top restaurants is "uninspired", "stagnant" and "smug".
While many are being seduced by the culinary pyrotechnics that countries such as Spain are offering, in truth, France's culinary heritage is unlikely ever to be toppled, as a recent trip to the south-east of France certainly proved to seven British chefs.
With the help of supplier and importer Premier Cheese and Berkmann Wine Cellars, Caterer decided to bypass France's capital and head south to check out the rumour and take a look at one region's distinctive style of cooking, fresh produce and wine.
The trip had a broad itinerary. Over three days we visited a chocolate house, a cheese-maturing house, a traditional neighbourhood restaurant frequented by the St Etienne football squad (in fact, the family of local hero Michel Platini was dining at the table next to us), the vineyards of wine legend Georges Duboeuf and the fresh produce market at Roanne. But the highlight of the trip, undoubtedly, was dinner at La Maison Troisgros in Roanne, where three generations of the Troisgros family have cooked since 1930 - a restaurant that has held three Michelin stars for 35 years.
There was much anticipation among the members of the group as we approached dinner. Had the restaurant kept its three-star rating from Michelin out of respect? Would its menu be steeped in tradition? And would Troisgros, being such a big name in the industry, know - or care, for that matter - who any of us were?
Any doubt that current chef-patron Michel Troisgros would appear that night was soon kicked into touch when he met the group within minutes of us arriving at the restaurant. We started with a reception in the restaurant's cellar, an incredibly atmospheric place. As we gingerly walked around the warren-like cellar, conscious of the value of the wines stored there (rumoured to have a replacement value of £10m), canapés and Champagne were circulated.
While the cellar itself has a traditional feel about it, its glass frontage juxtaposes cutting-edge French design, a theme that continues throughout the rest of the building, despite its somewhat plain exterior.
The cellar door opens, and in bounds Troisgros. His face is beaming and his body language exudes warmth. "Oo is the chef from Conran?" he asks, eyes darting about the party. He's immediately introduced to André Garrett, head chef at flagship Conran restaurant Orrery in London's Marylebone. "Oo is the chef from Gordon Ramsay?" Royal Hospital Road chef de cuisine Mark Askew steps forward, as does Neil Ferguson, head chef at Angela Hartnett at the Connaught.
Troisgros is introduced to the chefs - Andrew Turner, executive head chef, and Tony Joseph, head chef, of London's new aspiring five-star hotel, the Bentley; Robert Kirby, group executive head chef of Britain's fourth-largest contract caterer, Avenance; Mark Dodson, executive head chef at Cliveden - he's clearly pleased to meet them, but says he must return to his kitchen and scurries off upstairs.
Just before we sit down to dinner in the private dining room alongside the main restaurant area we're given a quick tour of the comfortably large, almost domestic kitchen. We find three British and two Japanese chefs working among the amazingly calm brigade. The absence of shouting, or even raised voices, is noticeable. The brigade appear content in their work, content with their mentor. Troisgros grabs hold of his head chef, Christophe Lorrat, in a fatherly sort of way, obviously keen for us to meet him.
As we sit down to dinner we're joined by the owner and some of the senior staff from the cheese maturer, Mons, that we're visiting the next day. The maître d' explains that Troisgros has created a €160 (£109) tasting menu for us. We start with pot de tomate "gremolata", a delicate tomato jelly served with gremolata, anchovy toast and basil. The reaction from the British chefs is mixed. Kirby enjoys the jelly, while Askew feels it's slightly too rubbery for his liking.
The first course is velours de fenouil aux moules de Bouchot - small, fine mussels in fennel mousse. "It has a nice clean taste," says Dodson. "The mousse on the mussels is excellent." (The following day Kirby describes this dish as one of his top five. "I'm driven by that dish," he says. "It's one of the best things I've ever eaten. I'd love to re-create it for our culinary team - the judges would love it. If it was served with sweetbreads, it would be really horny.")
Of course, in this part of France, we've got to have frogs' legs, and the next course, satay de cuisses de grenouille et frisons de concombre - frogs' legs from the small lakes and marshes of the surrounding area with a satay-style flavouring and finely sliced cucumber - doesn't disappoint.
But the frogs' legs are quickly eclipsed by a course of red mullet. Filet de rouget au pamplemousse exotique, crevettes grises is pan-fried red mullet served with grapefruit and shrimps. "Lovely rouget, fantastic taste," says Askew. "For me, this is the best course so far," says Ferguson. This course is followed swiftly by a brochette de queues d'‚crevisses … la nage aromatique (a skewer of king-size prawns), which changes the pace of the meal.
For the "main" course, Troisgros serves c"tes d'agneau marin‚es au lhassi vert (lamb cutlets marinated in lassi). Enough with the formalities, Turner picks up the delicate lamb bones and sucks the juices through his teeth. "You can really taste the flavour of the small lamb," he enthuses. "Look at the eye of the meat," says Askew. "It's tiny. Tiny."
During the cheese course (les fromages frais et affinés), Amnon Paldi from Premier Cheese and cheese supplier Herve Mons select the cheeses for each diner. Paldi explains his relationship with Mons and that he buys only from producers and maturing houses. Although much of his stock is French, he is supplying cheese from all over Europe. Earlier that day while we were tasting wines at Georges Dubeouf, Paldi gave us the chance to taste some fine British cheeses, which he had brought to France (Crofton, Flower Marie, Isle of Mull Cheddar Truckle and Bosworth Ash Log).
An assiette of five desserts completes the meal (figue-citron, fraises des bois, café-mirabelle, crème caramel à la rose, and abricot-chocolat au lait). "You never see fraises des bois with green stalks on at home," says Ferguson. Dodson agrees: "If you get good raw ingredients like that, you don't have to do much with them."
Over coffee, the chefs analyse the meal and the concept of dining out in France. "The whole tradition and knowledge about food is much deeper in France," says Askew. "You come out of college in England and don't know what foie gras is. You've never seen it, tasted it or touched it. Starting off, we're already behind. The public in England don't get to see any of that produce or style of cooking, except in French-style restaurants."
"Just look how calm the kitchen was," interjects Turner. "No shouting, just gelling and flowing and cooking to that standard."
the wines
And let's hear it for Berkmann Wine Cellars. The energetic London merchant deposited a fair dollop of cash in the coffers for the boys' trip, along with a visit to one its jewels, Georges Duboeuf.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that Old Man Duboeuf is single-handedly responsible for our continuing passion for Beaujolais, such is his visibility on the market. The international press have even dubbed him the King of Beaujolais - which is hardly surprising as his little set-up is responsible for about 25% of the region's production.
OK, so the Beaujolais Nouveau thing isn't quite what it used to be - and the sooner forgotten the better - we prefer our Beaujolais with a bit more age these days, now that our palates have become a tad more educated.
In fact, Beaujolais is one of the best-performing French regions in terms of exports to the UK, and figures have been up by 9% year-on-year for the past three years. "People are attracted by the fruitiness of the wines," explains Sabine Cleizergues of the French wine marketing body, Sopexa.
We're talking the Gamay grape, of course, which has all the flavours of a red wine but frequently the texture and balance of a white. It's a thin-skinned, prolific, easy-going early ripener that shines on old vines, and vinification is almost always based on carbonic maceration.
Carbonic what…? It's a process that transforms a small amount of sugar in grapes to ethanol without the intervention of yeasts and without even crushing the grapes, producing light, bright, fruity wines for early glugging.
Duboeuf, a "little" set-up? I'm joking, of course - France hasn't seen anything quite like it. If you've ever visited the big wine producers in California or Australia, you'll know what we're talking about here. The new Duboeuf winery, which opened last year, is vast, with merchandising galore and a train museum to boot - Duboeuf is a self-confessed train-spotter.
The winery itself has row upon row of gleaming stainless-steel tanks (285 of them, to be exact) and all the latest gizmos. They're inordinately proud of their bottling lines - which the chefs, incidentally, gaze at transfixed. "That one turns out 58,000 bottles an hour," boasts the moustachioed export director, Bernard Georges.
The reason behind all this investment, says Duboeuf, is that he has felt for some time that he could not get the concentration that today's consumers expect. "And I wanted to have greater control as early on as possible in the production process - not least from a pricing issue," says the ex-gymnast who rises daily at 5am and regularly tastes 200 cuv‚es before breakfast.
Duboeuf and son, Franck, now ditch up to 8% of the grapes offered by their 50-or-so growers (Gamay rots easily), and last year the company produced 1,100,000 litres of Beaujolais Villages, and Crus Morgon, Regni‚, Brouilly, Julienas, Moulin-à-Vent (plus wines from the Burgundy appellations of Pouilly Fuissé, St-Véran and Mâcon Villages Blanc). Incidentally, Sopexa's Cleizergues confirms that Brits are drinking more Beaujolais crus than ever before.
In the Beaujolais pecking order, the crus come at the top of the league and account for a quarter of all Beaujolais production, and can be found in the granite-dominated north of the region (known as Haut-Beaujolais).
The main differences between the crus are their elevation and mineral make-up. St-Amour is the furthest north, with its granite, clay and schist soils, while Brouilly and C"te de Brouilly are the southernmost crus. But there's no need to get hung up on whether you're drinking a cru Beaujolais or not - if you choose carefully, a Beaujolais-Villages can be every bit as good.
the cheeses
Michel's father, Pierre Troisgros, and Hervé Mons have had a long working relationship. Mons supplies Troisgros with cheese - seriously good cheese - and he's one of the best affineurs in the country. We were invited to take a look around his ageing cellars. "But no photographs, OK? What we do here is pretty confidential," warns Mons, with a grin.
This is a family business. He ages between 150 and 200 different cheeses from more than 125 different producers from all over France - from tiny villages in the Alps to the furthest corners of Normandy.
There's ash-rinded goats' cheese from the Haut Garonne (Fromage Cathare), Tomme from the Vaucluse (Tomme du Berger), Persillé du Malzieu (Roquefort-like, though firmer and less salty) and pungent Epoisses from the Côte d'Or. It took Mons 15 years to build up his network of suppliers.
Ma Mons drops by for a chat with her son, as he takes us through four of the ageing cellars (he has plans to build 10 more). "Look at the difference," he exclaims, pulling out a pleasingly rustic wooden plank bearing the same cheese at different stages of maturation. "It's all about ambiance - by that I mean the correct temperature and humidity," he says. Even the cellars' earth floors and the pebbles covering them play a part (they retain moisture to aid the humidity levels, which can hit 100%).
Are the spiders and tiny flies part of the ambiance, too? "Of course," he replies. "The flies came in with you, and the spiders keep the flies at bay." The whiff of ammonia in one particular cellar provokes an instant group reaction. "If it doesn't make your eyes water, then it's good ammonia," laughs Mons.
He shows us the drying room, kept at 19% humidity. This is where the fresh cheese first comes to rest, on straw mats, and the pleasingly acidic smell is down to the removal of their whey. "Cheeses will spend from one to three days in here - it's a crucial stage," he explains.
Modern technology plays a big part, too. Each batch is logged in to the computer as it arrives - a sticker bearing everything bar the name of the animal is stuck on a small piece of slate, which sits alongside each cheese in the cellar. "With raw milk you must prove its traceability," he says.
A cheese and wine pairing follows. Now, Mons reveals the reason why the French are mostly getting it wrong (the majority of Brits, too, come to that). And here it is: red wine is not the best match for cheese. To prove it, he lines up a sparkling cider, a vin jaune from the Jura, a Pouilly Fumé, a sweet Vouvray, a Givry (made from Pinot Noir) and a Bordeaux red.
In front of the wines is a selection of cheese styles - from aged Comté from the Jura to a local Marcellin, a goats' cheese from Savoie called Tarentais, Tomme Crayeuse, a Livarot-style Pavé d'Auge from Normandy and the Roquefort-like Persillé du Malzieu from the Languedoc-Roussillon.
We find matches for most - except for the reds, which clash horribly. "The norm in France is to drink red with cheese, but I've done so many blind tastings, with so many cheeses, and white wines fare much better," declares Mons. "If you think about it, the character of white wine is very similar to cheese - the nuttiness, particularly."
The Jura vin jaune, though, was the star of the show. "It goes with so many different cheeses," he claims. Made from the Savagnin grape (also known as Naturé) and Chardonnay, the sherry-like wine has a pleasing nuttiness that lends itself well to most of the cheeses we tried. Go discover.
the cellar
The problem with being one of the world's top chefs is that everybody wants to be on your wine list. So what's in the Troisgros cellar? Well, Jean-Baptiste Troisgros started stocking it more than 60 years ago, so we're talking all the big names here. There are 60,000 bottles in all, and the restaurant sells about 25,000 bottles a year. The list has won a coveted Grand Award from US publication Wine Spectator. Of course, the bulk of the list (95%) is French, and while there are interesting labels included from the New World, the selection is rather eccentric.
There's only one Aussie white, for example - a sticky from Bortoli (the Noble One) - and the two reds are both Shiraz (one from Mount Langi Ghiran). New Zealand gets just one entry: a Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot blend from Te Mata in Hawke's Bay. South Africa, oddly, gets only four sweeties, all vins de Constance; while California fares better, with plenty of Zinfandel from cult Santa Cruz producer Paul Draper at Ridge.
We start with a glass of Troisgros's own bubbly standing on the pebble-and-earth floor of the super-smart wine cellar. "The floor helps to maintain the humidity levels," explains the sommelier, as we wander among the all-star line-up stashed in polished redwood bins.
The Troisgros family have more than just a passion for wine - they have a stake in a vineyard. They hooked up with local producer Robert Sérol in 1992 to plant two hectares of Gamay in the Côte Roannaise. Called Les Blondins (the blond children), the wines are "fruity, moreish and best drunk young", they declare.
We keep things real during the meal with a lively 1999 Côtes du Jura, La Poirère, from Domaine Voorhuis-Henquet, which carries us through the first three courses, followed by a superior Mâcon Villages 1999 from local star Jean Thévenet, and a stunning 1999 Faugères, Cuvée Jadis, from Léon Barral that makes a perfect match for the lamb dish. We finish with a pretty 2000 late-harvest Gewurztraminer from Alsace mover and shaker, André Ostertag.
the contacts
Chocolat Weiss
8 rue du Plateau des Glières, 42000 Saint-Etienne, France.
Tel: 00 33 4 77 49 41 41.
Web: www.weiss.fr.
Georges Duboeuf Wines are available from Berkmann Wine Cellars (020 7609 4711) or contact sales@berkmann.co.uk to find out about your local sales office.
Premier Cheese
124 Gregories Road, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire HP9 1HT. Tel: 01494 680300. Web: www.premiercheese.com. Premier Cheese operates van sales out of its central depot in Bicester and also has five local depots covering London and the South-east.
Mons
Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, France. Tel: 00 33 4 77 64 40 79. Contact: Val‚rie Montbarbon, export manager. Alternatively, Mons cheeses are available through Premier Cheese.
La Maison Troisgros
Place Jean Troisgros, 42300 Roanne, France. Tel: 00 33 4 77 71 66 97. Web: www.troisgros.fr.
