Food writer Ian McNulty is in Lyon, France, this week as the city known as the French capital of gastronomy hosts the Bocuse d’Or competition, the “World Cup of cuisine.” New Orleans hosted a qualifying round for the prestigious event and is vying to host it again in the future. Below is one of a series of dispatches from the trip.
A clear winter night over the Soane River in Lyon, France shows the city’s beauty. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
At many New Orleans restaurants, without consulting a menu, you can reliably order shrimp remoulade and trout meuniere, or gumbo and fried chicken. This week, I’m in a city where you can say the same about escargot and quenelles, salade Lyonnaise and pâté-croûte.
This is Lyon, a city famous not just for food but for a cuisine particular to itself. It’s a food tradition maintained by many restaurants that, on the surface, serve much the same dishes. Sound familiar, New Orleans?
Salade Lyonnaise, thick with lardons of bacon, is part of the bouchon menu tradition at Le Bistrot d’Abel in Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Lyon’s restaurant scene is rich, studded with Michelin stars and elevated by French refinement. But the emblematic restaurant type is the bouchon, serving hearty menus of rustic regional dishes distinct to the area.
The bouchon restaurant is a fixture of Lyon, France, where a traditional cuisine endures. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The bouchon tradition is foundational to the city’s reputation and it comes through women, the famed mères Lyonnaise, who over generations brought the custom of cooking hearty meals for workmen up through modern culinary glory.
The chef Eugénie Brazier is one of the heralded mere Lyonnaise, celebrated in Lyon, France in public displays like this. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
BY IAN MCNULTY | Staff writer
They are memorialized and celebrated across the city, just another way Lyon elevates its food culture.
The bouchon is everywhere around this city, in great density in the tourist hub of Vieux Lyon, and also interspersed in more representative neighborhoods of this big river city.
Tasting bouchons
So far, I’ve visited two, each with similar menus but very different personalities.
Inside Le Bistrot d’Abel, a traditional bouchon in Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Le Bistrot d’Abel gives the baseline bouchon experience, in a casual room packed with big tables of groups eating together. Escargot swimming with parsley butter hit the table, next to the city’s namesake salad, with ruffles of greens making an alibi for what is essentially a bowl of lardons and egg. Then there’s a quenelle, the queen of bouchon menus, a large dumpling of emulsified fish (usually pike) with flour and eggs and cream in a rich sauce; it’s comfort food incarnate.
Quenelle is a menu classic at bouchons in Lyon, France, like Le Bistrot d’Abel. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Quenelle is a menu classic at bouchons in Lyon, France, like Le Bistrot d’Abel. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Escargot at Le Bistrot d’Abel, a traditional bouchon in Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Chicken with morel mushrooms is part of the menu at Le Bistrot d’Abel, a traditional bouchon in Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
A few miles away, Le Bouchon Sully takes a gently modernized approach to the same playbook and goes a notch more upscale. Chalkboards spell out the daily specials; a sideboard by the door is ready with bread and cheese from the region (including the creamy delight of Saint-Marcellin). A ramekin of gratons (cracklin’) is on the table to munch before ordering dinner. I think bouchon aficionados would like Cajun country.
Cheese and bread set the table by the entrance to Le Bouchon Sully, a gently modern read on the traditional bouchon restaurants of Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Salade Lyonnaise is a standard dish at Le Bouchon Sully, part of the bouchon restaurant tradition of Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Pate en croute Salade is a standard dish at Le Bouchon Sully, part of the bouchon restaurant tradition of Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Sweetbreads in vol-a-vent is part of the menu at Le Bouchon Sully, part of the bouchon restaurant tradition of Lyon, France. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Here comes the salade Lyonnaise again, and also the pâté-croûte, shot through with pistachio, encased in pastry. A vol-au-vent, that column of puff pastry New Orleans loves to fill with oysters or crawfish, is here a vessel for sweet breads and a sauce dancing between delicate and hearty.
At each spot, a seasoned Lyonnaise diner could guess the menu without reading it, yet each gives a different read on the shared tradition. It makes them feel rooted in place, one of the things I love about our own New Orleans restaurants back home.