Dispatch: A Gastronomic Exploration of Lyon, France
- donnaramadishes
- 7 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
I recently returned from an amazing trip to Lyon, France. Because Lyon is touted to be the "gastronomic center of France," and because it is located within a day trip of three excellent wine regions, the focus of the trip was eating and drinking. And let me tell you, it more than delivered.
That said, a week there (8 days, to be exact) may have been a bit much from a consumption perspective. There were simply too many restaurants and wineries to sample, and every single morsel consumed was utterly delectable. (I'll be dieting for a while as a result). I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any other city or town as devoted to gastronomy as Lyon.
While we dined, visited wineries, went to the markets, and took a cooking class, there is more to Lyon than just the food/wine. If you enjoy history, quaint European cityscapes, museums, shopping, and day trips to picturesque medieval towns, I would still highly recommend a visit. In fact, there is enough to say about the appeal of Lyon outside of gastronomy that it warranted a sister blog post, available here.
Lyon's Food Scene
Lyon’s food heritage is legendary, and there are more restaurants than one can imagine, as well a plethora of food/wine/cooking/serving-adjacent entities. While you will want to make reservations in advance, you should know that the restaurants -- even the
Michelin-starred, or almost starred ones, are NOT formal! Dress smartly/ put-together, and you'll be fine. Ties and fancy dresses are not required, which I loved.
It is my opinion that a great way to get a lay of the land, as well as an introduction to the food in a city is to take a food tour early in the trip. On my food tour in Lyon, I learned that because of the city's location at the convergence of the Saône and Rhône rivers, it was an important trading center, thus contributing to the city's food focus. Recipes, ingredients, and spices from all over were brought into town and incorporated into the local cuisine -- both at the high end restaurants and at the low-end places (aka bouchons, where, though amazing sauces and often long cooking times, cheap proteins were turned into delicious and hearty meals).
The Traditional Lyonnaise Foods to Try (Often Found at Bouchons):
Œuf en Meurette: poached egg in a red wine sauce with bacon
La quenelle de brochet, sauce Natua -- this is like a giant pike dumpling with a crust, served in a shellfish cream sauce.
Pâte en croute (foie gras)
Cervelle de canuts -- considered a cheese, it is more like a delicious, herbaceous, slightly garlicky dip with a base that tastes like burrata filling. It's amazing, and great with bread or smoked salmon (or anything, I think). As a cheese in a cheese course, though, I found it to be odd as its consistency is more liquidy...
For dessert -- pretty much anything "praline." (Get some of the best at Boulangerie du Palais -- no website and closed Tuesdays & Wednesdays)
Local desserts revolve around the pink or red praline (so colored by beet sugar). They are not as sweet as American pralines, and while they are added to many desserts and confections, my favorite way to enjoy them is when they are added to brioche. That and a cup of coffee -- chef kiss!
To be clear, the dining scene in Lyon is bigger than just the bouchons. The city is teeming as well with bistros, bars, brasseries, fine restaurants, and everything in between. Every morsel we ate was delicious -- from the restaurants on my list to the random places we stopped in for a nosh. (Click here for some of the places we didn't get to...)
Where we dined:
Daniel & Denise (St. Jean location -- there are several). Traditional bouchon Lyonnaise. Excellent, although lots of tourists.
Brasserie Bouillon Baratte, which was delicious (the duck and the citrus millefeuille especially).
Cozna, in Annecy. Small and Michelin-level; a 2-hour train ride from Lyon (during a day trip).
La Mère Braziere -- 2-star Michelin Bouchon with formal service. Expensive and the only place I felt it was appropriate to dress up a bit (no ties or fancy dresses, but jackets and the equivalent for women). They served possibly the best bite of my life to date (a crab and caviar with crab foam appetizer -- omg).
Söma -- a tiny restaurant with a creative menu. Everything was executed to perfection. A gem in Lyon.
Bouchon Tupin -- a "real" bouchon. Delicious, not very touristy.
Le Poivron Bleu -- located outside the center of town (but walkable), this restaurant is amazing. Small but not tiny with an inventive (not weird) menu. Highly recommend.
La Sommelière -- a 1-star Michelin restaurant offering a Japanese French fusion menu. It is tiny (3-6 tables), exquisite, tranquil, not stuffy, and utterly divine. This was the last meal we ate in Lyon and it was a perfect ending.
Here is some food porn with just some of the most memorable bites from these exquisite restaurants. Aside from the brasserie dinner, all the dishes had a perfect balance of flavors and textures. (The brasserie was very good but pretty typical brasserie fare.) I didn't think I was a foam person, but when done properly, it turns out that I am.
A note about the menus in Lyon...
With very few exceptions (like the brasserie), there were not many options from which to choose on the menus at the restaurants where we dined, and the options were greatly influenced by what was in season and available at the market. In other words, aside from mainstay bouchon items, you can't know what will be on the menu before you go. Most places had set menus (often called market menus -- menu du marche) with only two or three entrees (starters), plats (main courses) and desserts (and/ or cheeses) available. For us, there were zero issues, but for picky eaters, this could be an issue and you may want to spend more time at the brasseries than at the bouchons or the small and exceptional restaurants which we patronized. Here are some examples...
The Markets In Lyon
One of the "must visit" sites in Lyon is Les Halles de Paul Bocuse (a famous chef from Lyon with a namesake 2-star Michelin restaurant just outside of town). I went there thinking it was a market where chefs got their ingredients since that is what I had read. Having been, it's hard to believe that is the case. It's really a good food hall where you can buy things for picnics or your Airbnb (or eat at the restaurants, open for lunch), but don't expect tastes or (from my perspective) an interactive food experience. It's reminiscent of the Harrod's Food Hall or Fauchon, in Paris. I'm honestly not sure why it is considered an imperative stop when visiting Lyon, unless you want to see beautifully prepared and available foods to take away. I went in the late morning (mid-week), concerned it was too late -- it was dead and as it was too early for lunch, we left pretty much empty-handed (I did try a croissant there, which was good but not mind-blowing). On the other hand, the Saint Antoine Market is where chefs select fresh and local food products before 10am, at which time the vendors jack up the prices for the tourists. I know this as we went there at the start of our cooking class.
The Cooking Class
If you enjoy cooking or baking, I highly recommend taking a class while in Lyon (or anywhere which has a cuisine you love). For ours, a chef brought us to the Sainte Antoine Market to pick up ingredients before we cooked (and ate) lunch. While I won't recommend my specific class (the chef didn't speak enough in English for those with no French language capabilities, the class ran long, and he didn't send the recipes out as promised), I enjoyed my time and now I know how to make blue cheese foam!
Wine-focused day trips from Lyon:
Lyon makes a good base for day trips to the northern Côte du Rhône (syrah & voignier grapes), Beaujolais (gamay grapes), and the Pommard area in Burgundy (pinot noir grapes). En route(s), we made stops at the medieval villages/towns of Peruges, Oingt, and Beaune, (which has a fun and interesting mustard experience).
Beaujolais Country
The Beaujolais valley (gamay grapes) offers many wineries to sample and visit, as well as many medieval towns with amazing views and history. We had two tasting stops -- one for Crement de Bourgogne (sparking wines) at Oedoria (not sold under that label in the US) and one in a lovely town called Oingt, at Domaine de Fond-Vielle. They both offered lovely, crisp wines.
Burgundy: Mustard & Markets in Beaune & Pinot Noir in Pommard
Beaune, located in the heart of Burgundy, is a spectacularly beautiful medieval town (touristy though it may be). We visited the town on a Saturday which happens to be Market Day there, and the offerings were impressive, as you can see from the pictures above. We visited the town primarily because it is home to one of the oldest mustard makers in the world (Edmond Fallot, since 1840), which happens offers a mustard experience, during which you can make your own mustard -- and we like our mustard, so the tour was absolutely worth it for us. Who knew that Dijon mustard does not need to be made in Dijon, but that Moutarde de Bourgogne does need to be made there, using local seeds and wine?! We came home with several flavored mustards, and upon unpacking them immediately regretted not bringing home more.
After the mustard experience (and a yummy lunch, of course), we had a wine tasting at Chateau de Pommard (about 10 minutes from Beaune), where we learned about the seven distinct terroirs on the property and tasted some excellent reds, produced from the grapes across those terroirs. King Louis (the something) tasted the pinot noir wines from Pommard and enjoyed them so much he had a palace built there, overlooking the vines (which is now Chateau de Pommard). While there are so many wonderful wineries to visit and wines to be tasted throughout Burgundy, I strongly recommend a visit to this one. And, FYI, their wines are not available in shops -- they can only be purchased in person there or online.
Northern Côte du Rhône
While Beaujolais and Burgundy are north of Lyon, the Côte du Rhône region is just south of the city. We visited the northernmost area, where Côte Roti (reds, from syrah grapes) and Condrieu (white, from viognier grapes) are produced, both of which are delicious. The landscape where Côte Roti is made is very steep, making the hand-harvesting of the grapes, which yield only about one bottle per vine, arduous (leading to expensive bottles). We tasted some delicious reds and whites, and came home with one of each from one of the most famous (and deservedly so) producers in this area: E. Guigal.
Logistical Information
Where to stay in Lyon: the île between the two rivers is a great, central location. We were less than a 15 minute walk from almost every place we went in Lyon. The longest walk was about 30/35 minutes, which was actually a blessing in disguise as it helped us walk off the meal we were about to eat/ had just eaten.
Dinners start serving at 7 or 7:30pm, and in most places you have the table for the evening (if not, they let you know when you make the reservation).
If you are not renting a car, you can visit wineries and towns outside Lyon by hiring a private driver or taking a small group tour. We did both, and have no regrets (although be warned that a private driver is expensive).
A good resource to help ensure you know what you are ordering is the French Food Dictionary ($2.99 for the e-book), which I downloaded and referred to many times...
A day trip to Annecy, in the French Alps makes for a nice break. It is easily accessible by train from Lyon, and if you want a delicious meal there, you MUST try Cozna -- it was one of the best meals of the trip (here are some pictures):
Hungry for More? (Literally)
As much as we fit into our 8-day gastronomic exploration of Lyon, there were plenty of places we simply couldn't fit in. These are at the top of that list:
Takao Takano (a 2-starred Michelin French Japanese fusion restaurant)
Brasserie Georges (craft brewery and brasserie!)
L'Institut (Lyon's version of a training restaurant like the Culinary Institute of Art in the US)
Abstract (for hip cocktails)
Want to know how famous chef Daniel Boulud spends his time in Lyon? Click here.
If you are a lover of French food and/ or wine, it's time to add Lyon to your bucket list. Just pace yourself!
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