On demand: "Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros"

It takes as long as it takes, but you have to get it right would appear a credo shared by the veteran American documentarist Frederick Wiseman and the Michelin-starred chefs he films in his latest, typically meticulous four-hour project. Menus-Plaisirs is the latest in Wiseman's studies of how things run, its true subject revealed over time as the detail-ravenous preparation that goes into the blue-riband dining experience offered by a hotel and restaurant complex set deep in the leafy Loire countryside. It will be an hour before anybody takes their seats to eat in Wiseman's film; in the meantime, the filmmaker captures la famille Troisgros - head chef Michel and his two sons - visiting a nearby market to forage for freshness and flavour, then returns with them to their establishment to eavesdrop and pry. The specifics are key here: Wiseman sets out his stall (or, if you will, lays his table) with what would in any other circumstance seem a ridiculously attenuated discussion about menus (what's in season, what's available, what's desirable), but one supposes that's how nitpicky these professionals have to be. Then it's back to the kitchens, where a small army of artisans operate in librarian silence, conjuring the delicacies you'd expect to find on a Michelin-starred restaurant's menu: "pigeon gravy with vinegar" (non merci), lamb's brains and kidneys (absolument pas), handcrafted lemon meringue mousses (okay, now you have my interest) and what would appear the western world's grandest cheeseboard to finish. (No frites anywhere as far as I could see, and believe me these hungry eyes were looking.) Along the way, Menus-Plaisirs comes to explain why certain places charge the fees they do for these plaisirs: it isn't just the finely calibrated taste, it's that these dishes are vastly more labour-intensive than, say, serving up pie and mash.

The film's appeal is twofold. First, yes, the food, often glorious looking and sounding food. (The ultimate proof, of course, would be in the eating, and Les Troisgros' healthy turnover of regular patrons indicates appetites are very much sated by the ever-changing menus.) Around these plates, however: the stirring sight of passionate people making a very good fist of doing what they do for a living. The first is the more immediate pleasure: in spending so long detailing how this restaurant's elaborate confections are assembled, Wiseman affords the viewer ample time to weigh up whether or not we'd want to try them. Yet the scenes of Troisgros admin introduced as between-course palate cleansers - meetings with suppliers, discussions about winelists, front-of-house briefings - expand Wiseman's field of study, and allow his film to feed our mind with some idea of how the world works: now we're thinking about pricing, ethics, farming practises, inherited traits, perhaps even elite privilege. As Michel recognises, Les Troisgros doesn't operate in isolation: it's part of a regionally sprawling ecosystem of consumption. As ever, Wiseman lets it all play out without intervention or interruption: this is the restaurant - more specifically: this restaurant - as it is, as it goes, as it happens. Don't book expecting the conflict of The Bear or Boiling Point or anything Gordon Ramsay-related, because Wiseman knows that living and working in this world is complicated enough: it's clear that everyone who sits down to eat at these tables will have their own idea of what a good meal is. (Among the clientele, you will encounter some dreadful wine bores, and one weirdo who flatly tells his waiter "I don't like chocolate". Who are these people?) That makes for a lowish-stakes Wiseman doc, granted, and it's still possible you will emerge heading towards Greggs rather than your nearest four-peas-on-a-plate place. Yet I found myself looking on in the knowledge that if I ever did want four peas on a plate, Les Troisgros would furnish me with the tastiest four peas, immaculately presented. One reason these chefs invited Wiseman in to cook alongside them: they surely knew he'd provide them with the best advert the proprietors of any Michelin-starred restaurant could want.

Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros is now available to rent via the BFI Player.