Pierre Troisgros Dies at 92

Pierre Troisgros, the chef credited with facilitating France’s influential nouvelle cuisine movement, has died. He was 92 years old.

“An emblematic figure of the great French cuisine, Pierre Troigros was one of those chefs whose name has become an international reference in gastronomy,” Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin guides, said in a statement. “Pierre embodied the transmission and innovation that has always permeated the kitchens of the establishment.”

Troisgros rose to fame alongside his brother Jean at his family’s restaurant in Roanne, France. The Troisgros brothers took over their parents’ restaurant, the Hotel Moderne, which opened in 1930, and renamed it Les Frères Troisgros in the mid-1950s, two years after it received its first Michelin star. There, their cooking style departed from French traditions, prioritizing lighter, fresh ingredients in what’s now acknowledged as a precursor to nouvelle cuisine. (Paul Bocuse, who died in 2018 at the age of 91, was a close friend, compatriot, and other nouvelle cuisine ambassador.)

By 1968, Troisgros’s restaurant would consistently earn three Michelin stars, a distinction that it’s held for a stunning 52 consecutive years: Troisgros’s son Michel and grandsons Cesar and Leo now continue the restaurant’s legacy, and in 2017, they moved the it from Roanne into a villa five miles outside the city, in Ouches. The Troisgros family empire also now includes an outpost in Tokyo and two more-casual concepts, in what France24 calls “the country’s greatest gastronomic dynasty.”

• Legendary nouvelle cuisine pioneer Pierre Troisgros dies aged 92 [France24]