Fabulous French Food

The colors are amazing!  One of my favorite

designers said to look to nature for color

inspiration.  She said that mother nature mixes

all sorts of colors and it is never garish.

These pics are from Michel Bras Toya Japon.  One of

Ten Best French Restaurants Outside France.

http://cuisinedor.wordpress.com/

One restaurant they are specifically known for is the 3 star

Michelin chef, Michel Bras’ restaurant. I haven’t yet had the

opportunity to visit his restaurant in Laguiole in France, but the

concept here in Toya is the same. In fact, he chose this location

due to its similarity to Aubrac. His ambition was to bring his

culinary philosophy to Lake Toya, where he felt that it can be

 interpreted without losing its authenticity. Since Hokkaido offers

some of the most wonderful vegetables, fish, and meat in Japan,

it’s works harmoniously with Michel Bras’ concept of preserving

the local produce and highlighting the pureness of each ingredient.

The dining experience is a poetic culinary journey. Even the menu

itself reads like a poem. This evening, the menu was titled

“Escape and Land”, with an excerpt from Michel Bras’ journal

which inspired the them of the menu. All of our dishes were poetry

and art on a plate–it’s certainly not just great food with beautiful

presentation. I’ve never experienced such a cerebral dinner. He

doesn’t want you to just taste the food, he wants you to think

about it. It kind of sounds intrusive or pretentious, but it isn’t.

His desire is for you to experience something beyond how you

normally perceive food. He succeeds, and thankfully, Michel Bras

can back up his culinary philosophy with fantastic dishes. For the

meat course, we asked if we could request something other

than chicken, which was on the menu that evening. They graciously

replaced it with filet of Tokachi beef from Hokkaido. We don’t

know how the chicken was, but the beef was absolute heaven.

 It had so much flavor but it wasn’t overly rich. And it was so

tender that you almost didn’t have to use your Laguiole knife.

The unanimous consensus: the best beef we’ve ever had.

We still talked about it the next morning.

How lucky of us that Michel Bras brought his genius to Hokkaido.

He’s willing to forgo a Michelin star (currently, the Michelin guide

reviews only the Tokyo area and the Kyoto-Osaka area) and set

his restaurant in Lake Toya, just to stay true to his philosophy

and concept. He’s a true artist, not just a chef. And I’m willing

to make that trip to Lake Toya just to experience Michel Bras’

 wonderful world of food.