For Rick and me it was one of our first trips to Europe together. We were both in our early thirties. I'm sure Rick will point out he was a little closer the early side of thirty than I was. The trip came after Rick had tried his hand at the culinary arts studying as a sous chef with Peter Kump. As part of our trip and with this burgeoning interest in haute cuisine we'd decided to do a tour of some of the famous Lyonnais restaurants we'd heard so much about. We'd made reservations with Paul Bocuse, and Les Frères Troisgros months before we were to travel. We first ate at Paul Bocuse. We still have the menu that included his famous turtle soup. At Paul Bocuse you consume more than what's on the menu. You drink in every aspect of the room's interior, the table settings and the service. We didn't think anything could be more memorable. We were wrong.
Les Frères Troisgros had already acquired its third Michelin star. We'd scheduled our reservation for a lunch. While we'd be staying in Lyon the trip to Les Frères Troigros required a train ride to its bucolic setting in the small hamlet of Roanne. It was a late lunch. When we arrived many of the other lunch guests had already left. I'm not sure if it was our relative youth, our American novelty (not many Americans traveled to Roanne) or what we wore. I remember there seemed to be a real fascination with the pink knit tie I had worn. Several of the kitchen staff kept sneaking a peek at us from behind the swinging portal door leading in and out of the kitchen. Lunch was lengthy and superb but our most graphic memory was of dessert brought to our table on a cart filled with French cheeses, fantasy inspired pastries, and an assortment of handmade ice creams and sorbets; the latter all presented in little metal milk cans similar to the ones we had seen throughout the Rhones-Alpes region at restaurants both grand and humble. As with most of the courses at Troisgros the desserts came in threes. After a sabayon and a cheese tasting we closed our meal with the ice creams. We can't remember if it was a glace a la manderine or a lavender infused selection we chose, but by then we were so full I was thankful it was only a small scoop that was pulled from those little milk cans.
As we left there was a little gift area in the entry with Troisgros souvenirs, plates with their logo, aprons and branded utensils displayed in a dimly lit case. Sandwiched between the plates and serving pieces were the very same silvery ice cream milk cans with the Troisgros name engraved on them that we had just seen on the dessert cart. We both looked at each other with a different kind of hunger in our eyes. These beckoning sorbet servers seemed the perfect souvenir to take home. This was prior to cell phones with built-in calculators and we were so stuffed with all the butter and sugar we had just consumed our minds weren't working at full capacity. We tried doing the conversion calculations from francs to dollars in our mathematically challenged brains and somehow came up with a cost of $37.50 for each can. We bought two thinking we had scored a sweet souvenir deal, the perfect memento to remind us of our glutinous tour of French culinary royalty. Having just started our lives together, we were very aware of what extravagances we could afford. Lunch with the Troigros brothers was about all we had budgeted for that afternoon. It wasn't until we got to the train station that we realized in our wine soaked heads we had misplaced a decimal point on the cost of our charming milk cans. Turning them over we discover their Sterling Silver stamp. Our sweet little souvenirs had cost us $375.00 each! The sweat of realization began to pierce through my crisp white shirt into the armholes of my linen sports coat. We debated going back. We didn't. We held that bag containing our treasure very tightly on our train ride back to Lyon only to breakout into hysterical laughter once we were safely back in our hotel.
We love our silver milk cans. Turns out they are the perfect fit for a pint of Haagen-Dazs pineapple coconut ice cream. Yum!
THE GALLERY
Willy Ronis
Represented by Peter Fetterman Gallery
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