Michel Bras -
Laguiole, South Western France

Yet, his meals bear little similarity to those hearty affairs his mother still serves her family around the huge polished slab of gray granite that serves as a table in the center of the kitchen of Michel Bras' ultra modern establishment. (His is very much a family affair. His mother cooks lunch for the family still. Her husband arrives from town, Michel Bras and his charming wife Ginette materialize, their son Sébastien who is most ably in charge of the pastry and bakery division of the enterprise wanders over brushing off flour in puffs, and inevitably a local producer making a delivery who has timed his arrival well and just happens to be on hand as lunch is being served. Often a relative, but being local is close enough.)

Michel Bras is filled with what might be considered contradictions in another, but which turn out to be complementary talents in this very special chef. He is both coolly intellectual and yet passionate about his food. He has an abiding love for the traditions of his region, a remote, gray and green, granite snagged land, filled with gray stone houses roofed with gray slate hunched in a high-land environment where the grass is green but the trees leaf late and nature punishes. A land that boasts of its own breed of beef cattle, its own cheese and its own unique sausage not to mention its knives used all over France known for an unusually shaped blade. Snow covers the ground until late spring.

Even as he celebrates all these traditional influences in his food, he has built a hotel/restaurant of such a modern style and impaled it like a shard of crystal into a prominent hillside presiding over his home town of Laguiole that it is at once exciting in its daring and yet astonishing in its clashing lack of conformity to its surroundings. On first sight one is struck speechless as the question persists on the brain "why did he built that thing there?"

Lobster Tail with leeks.		Pigeon with broccoli. Fisherman mending his nets next to the entrance of the restaurant.
The original of the hot biscuit with liquid chocolate center that has subsequently become the popular with every chef in the world it seems. Recipe>>

The answer slowly evolves as you experience his creation and involve yourself in his culinary genius and personal dreams. We started at the plate. "I choose a pure, white plate because I want nothing to distract from and conflict with the food." He uses the plate as an artist uses a blank, white canvas. The dish becomes a painting in food, not just to the eye but most assuredly to the palate. A paint brush will be used to swipe a sauce across the surface, a spoon to dribble another. Crushed seeds, dried and crushed orange peel, young petals from edible flowers, baby shoots of garlic and of wild herbs fresh from the hillsides will be scattered across the plate, just-so, in flavorful decoration. Never just for decoration.

For the same reasons that Michel Bras utilizes a pure white plate to carry the artistry of his cuisine, he has chosen the ultra modernist approach for the architecture of his establishment. He wants a cool, calm, unemotional environment that does not distract the visitor from the sensory experience of his food. Just as he considers his food to be an extension of the land around him, he wants the hotel and restaurant structure to spring forth physically from the land itself as a symbol representing his culinary philosophy. Thus the main building housing the lounge, reception, dining room and kitchens is designed to appear to be surging out of the loins of the hillside, half in half out. Connected to and of the land but simultaneously thrusting into unexplored space, unseen and unlimited frontiers ahead.

"We always have something to learn from the riches Nature spreads before us: forever sniffing, tasting, observing. Alpine Fennel and the almondy flavor of Meadow Sweet, prized for its medicinal properties; Elder Flowers fragrant with the heady scent of nutmeg. Vegetables too: Basella with its sticky leaves; the delicate flavor of Chickweed; and 'Tanous' or cabbage shoots. Anything crisp, crackly, crunchy, sharp or sweet-smelling winds up decorating the plates. To all those who make the friendly gesture of sharing our love for Aubrac, we give the best that we and the region can offer. The intensity of these moments will linger on, the gift of a place which makes you forget all else but which will stay bright in your mind forever."