“The best restaurant is the restaurant where I am best known.” The truism has been variously attributed, but it was the operating principle of Charles Masson during the roughly four decades he made La Grenouille a celebratory spot for any occasion. La Grenouille was a place of surpassing elegance and beauty—but never snobbery.
I say “was” because, though it still exists, La Grenouille bears little more than a passing resemblance to what it was. In late 1974, Charles left university at the age of 19 to help run the place when his father, also named Charles, fell ill and died of cancer. Forty years later, in 2014, he left the business with not a single share in the restaurant after unsuccessfully trying to oversee it with his brother, Philippe.
