14 | THE CAPITAL OF FRENCH GASTRONOMY


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FLAVOURS OF FRANCE: EXPLORING LYON


February 2025


blood). The Lyonnais are proud that the city has more restaurants per square mile than any other European city except Paris. Spend a few days here and you realise that the daily rhythm of life centres on meals. The third city Lyon


of France,


is sometimes disregarded by visitors but it has more than its share of cultural heritage with an elegant historic centre for an energetic post- meal walk. The old city,


is laid out with narrow cobblestone streets,


15th


century mansions, small museums and an exquisite cathedral.


With


its twisting lanes, meandering covered passageways and hidden courtyards this area is a national monument and a place of fascinating discovery.


Paul Clements samples the culinary and cultural highlights of this celebrated city and discovers that traditional French food is having a revival...


BY PAUL CLEMENTS


IN the French southeast, Lyon is a city of culinary brilliance with an international reputation for cuisine and undisputed gastronomic capital. It is a dynamic place for a long weekend break where you can enjoy strolling through secret passageways,


discovering historic


buildings or exploring museums. Renowned for its gastronomy and culture patrimony, Lyon stands on the twin rivers of the Saône and the Rhône, towered over by a majestic basilica. The imprint of history is around every corner and is found in its streets and squares of rosy buildings, elegant riversides and famed old passageways, known as traboules, all crammed into 2,000 years of history.


A crowning achievement is the city’s rich culinary tradition and the fact that it was the birthplace of the renowned chef Paul Bocuse, who died in 2018. Famously dubbed the ‘pope of gastronomy’, he was known for the high quality of his restaurants and his inventive approach to cuisine. From the outside of the huge food hall, named in his honour, a smiling wall mural of the chef looks down on visitors as we arrive to sample what the city has to offer. The building teems with local produce and although established in the 1970s it is a sleek food hall for the 21st century, serving up some of the best dishes in the city. In one corner are truffles and vegetables, next to fish ranging from pike to haddock


or salmon, some of which is from parts of Ireland and Scotland. Chicken is popular in Lyon, especially Bresse which has received legal protection and like a fine wine achieved an appellation d’origine controlée (AOC) status in 1957, guaranteeing its quality. The chickens are fed a diet of cereals and milk


resulting in


succulent flavourful meat.


Elsewhere,


spices with humous from North Africa sit alongside oranges, tomatoes, olives and dried fruit.


Regional


charcuterie ranges from a selection of cold cuts of ham, beef, dried sausages with black pepper, and terrines of pork


and a duck.


Mouthwatering platters of more than


dozen


pungent cheeses from the Rhône Valley are on sale where the creamy Saint-Marcellin goat’s cheese is the flagship fromage of Lyon and tastes delicious on bread or biscuits. For the sweet-toothed there are a multitude of alluring chocolates, colourful pastries and sugary macarons from which to choose. However, the standout pink pralines are a local specialty dating from the 19th century. Pralines are a confection


of almond


or hazelnut coated with caramelized sugar and have a crunchy texture, although your dentist may not approve of them. For another treat, clafoutis is a super-tasty staple Lyonnais dessert with


fresh cherries


baked in a rich custard- like flan. A walking tour of the food hall is an adventure in taste, sight and smell – our guide likes to say: ‘You come here, you to eat with your eyes.’ There is a renewed


love of French food in the UK and Ireland that is now in favour of a simpler home-cooking style exemplified in Lyon with creamy sauces and potato dauphinoise. Wander around the city and you will stumble on traditional snug bistros, known as bouchons serving rustic meat dishes. These were formerly run by meres Lyonnaises (Lyonnaise mothers) who fed workers cheaply and filled plates of offal washed down with red wine. Impervious to fashion, the bouchons are


family-run traditional and


devoted to local specialities, especially generous portions of


meat


and pork, served with minimal fanfare and washed


down The with


unpretentious local wine.


term ‘bouchon’ originated


historic as


a


description for the bundles of straw that hung over the entrance of casual bistros indicating that food and drink was available for horses and humans. They have survived into the third decade of the 21st century, their décor consisting of tiled walls, wooden benches and zinc counters. Some bouchons, such as Café Comptoir


Abel, have a pedigree stretching back 100 years. The building itself is a 200-year-old inn based in the central district of Ainay in the 2nd arrondissement of the Presqu’ile (peninsula). It is close to the banks of the River Saône, one of Lyon’s two major rivers. On the Monday evening of my visit the bistro is extremely busy upstairs and downstairs. Filled with vintage décor, framed prints, and single lights hanging from ceilings, the menus are chalked up on blackboards while affable waiters hover around tables. My main course is a delicious oven-cooked quenelles de brochet (creamed pike dumplings) with sauce and potato topping. Other classics on the menu include chicken with cream sauce and morels, tripe sausage as well as salade lyonnaise made up of bacon, a poached egg, croutons and frisee lettuce. Full of excellent value, bouchons serve simple dishes such as gratinée lyonnaise (onion soup topped with bread and cheese) and boudin noir (pork


The Renaissance houses were typically built around a courtyard,


reached


from the street through a vaulted passage beneath a house. In each street some courtyards had another vaulted


passage at the back leading into the next street – these public passages, still in use, are called traboules which are secret atmospheric places where silk manufactures and other merchants brought their goods. Their purpose was to allow people to get from their homes to the river quickly. Traboule is a corruption of the Latin ‘trans-ambulare’, meaning to walk across or pass through, with some dating back to the 14th century. There are believed to be more than 400 of these in Lyon, although less than half are open to the public and are marked with an


Vieux Lyon,


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