France: the best places to eat in Lyon

The bouchon: Lyon’s foodie heart

If any French city can claim to be France’s culinary capital, it is the east-central metropolis of Lyon.

The secret of the its gastronomic success is a deep-seated love of food that permeates the very fabric of the place, combined with a fortuitous position adjoining two of France’s finest wine regions, (Côtes du Rhône and Beaujolais), and some of its most fertile farmland.

One of the best ways to gain an insight into the mouth-watering array of produce available in the region is to visit the Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse, close to the city’s Part Dieu railway station.

What you will find is a large covered market containing around 60 food and wine stalls as well as several restaurants. 

Food lovers will enjoy a stroll among its passageways and can gaze in wonder at the wide variety of tempting treats on offer. 

These range from charcuterie – traditionally eaten in the city as a mid-morning snack with a glass of red wine – to pâtés, smoked salmon, coquillages, wines, marrons glacés, macaroons… the list goes on.

Aromatic cheese stalls offer a range of regional offerings such as Tomme de Savoie, Beaufort, Abondance and Reblochon, among others. 

These famous cheeses owe their flavour to the lush Alpine pastures that lie relatively close to the city – places where fortunate cows feed on some of the best grass in Europe. 

They are all flavoursome, firm and rich – the tasty Beaufort, for example, requires 11 litres of milk to produce one litre of cheese. 

The sight and smell of all the delights on offer at the Halles would be enough to give the most ascetic of people an appetite. 

Wines worth sampling

If you really cannot wait, you can always seek out the restaurant Chez les Gones, actually within the market itself, where the ingredients are suitably fresh and of high quality.

The Halles is the place many a local restaurateur sources the items on their menu and it is appropriate that it is named after one of the greatest chefs in French culinary history.

The 84-year-old Paul Bocuse is synonymous with Lyon’s food scene and is an almost legendary figure among French chefs. 

Those who are prepared to invest a goodly sum of euros in a memorable culinary experience may want to make the pilgrimage to his three Michelin-starred restaurant, l’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, just outside the city.

L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges: a colourful place

Here, the five-course Menu Classique is available at €140 – visitors can add a further €40 for the Menu Bourgeois, while the Menu Grande Tradition costs €225.

The latter feast commences with a slab of foie gras in a sauce of Verjus (a type of reduced grape juice); then moves leisurely on to a Bocuse signature dish of truffle soup – something he created when he was awarded the Legion d’Honeur in 1975 and which was initially served at the Elysée Palace to the then French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

A filet of sole with noodles provides the fish course prior to the pièce de resistance – plump Bresse chicken cooked in a bladder à la Mère Fillioux; the truffle-stuffed chicken arriving at the diner’s table enclosed in the balloon-like bladder, which is duly pierced by the attendant waiter. 

As that last dish suggests, there’s more than a hint of theatre about eating at l’Auberge du Pont de Collonges. 

For a more down-to-earth, everyday experience, you should focus your attention in and around Lyon’s Old Town.

Some 30 years ago, this area was rather unfashionable and down-at-heel. That’s hard to believe today, however. Listed by Unesco in 1998, the district is famous now for its Renaissance architecture and its traboules – ancient covered passageways that run under houses to link the city’s streets. 

These were initially built to allow Lyon’s many silk weavers to move their wares without them being damaged by rain, but also proved invaluable during World War II, when resistance fighters were able to avoid detection by the occupying Nazi forces by slipping in and out of these often well-hidden boltholes.

Also a long-standing institution in this part of the city are the bouchons – small, locally focused restaurants that tend to specialise in Lyonnaise dishes.

The latter are many and varied, but possibly the most ubiquitous among them is andouillette. 

It is probably fair to say this coarse, meaty sausage is something of an acquired taste. It’s made from tripe and intestines, generally from a pig, and has a distinctive, some might even say offputting, smell and taste. 

It is often served with mustard, which can be a welcome addition should you find yourself needing something to mask the unique flavour.

To sample the dish, try Le Comptoir du Boeuf at 3 Place Neuve. The restaurant has set menus at €13,80; €19.50 and €24.50 and numbers andouillette with steamed potatoes among its best-sellers. 

Alternatively, you could also try other regional specialities such as tête de veau or warm pork sausage in wine sauce. To follow there is cervelle de canut, a relatively innocuous soft cheese with chives. 

Its name translates as ‘silk weaver’s brain’, after its pale colour and consistency and in recognition of the industry that flourished in Lyon in former times – as well, apparently, as the repetitive (and mind-numbing) nature of some aspects of the weavers’ work.

For an alternative that is slightly off the main tourist route, you should head across the Saône river to Café Comptoir Abel at 25 Rue Guynemer. 

Café Comptoir Abel: authentic

This bouchon positively oozes history and authenticity, with its cardinal red walls, daily special dishes chalked on a blackboard and selection of intriguing antique ornaments. 

As you might expect, it specialises in local favourites such as beef tongue (€13) saucissons with lentils (€11), quenelles de brochet (pike dumplings served in a creamy sauce, €18) and chicken with forest mushrooms (€29).

Alternatively, you could build up an appetite by walking up the cobbled street to Fourvière, the district overlooking the Old Town. 

Here, you will find the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière and, close by, the Restaurant de Fourvière. 

Not only does the latter have an evocative setting, particularly when the church bells are being rung, but its terrace offers superb views overlooking the city. 

Superb views at the Restaurant de Fourvière

This is a place to indulge in dishes such as foie gras terrine and duck casserole or, for something a little lighter, you could try the salade Lyonnaise (comprising lettuce, bacon, poached egg and croutons).

Regardless of what you choose from the menu you can always burn off some of the resulting calories with a wander round the striking basilica itself. 

Built between 1872 and 1884, its interior is dramatic, to say the least, with a mass of gilding and wonderfully colourful depictions of biblical scenes.

Students of more ancient history may be interested to know the basilica sits on the site of the Roman forum. Lyon, and specifically, this hill-top area, was the site of Lugdunum – the most important Roman city in what was then the province of Gaul and nearby the remains of two enormous theatres and the Gallo-Roman museum should satisfy the most enthusiastic of classical scholars.

By the time you’ve taken in all the cultural sites of Fourvière, it’s just possible you may have built up an appetite again.

If that’s the case, then walk back down the hill and head for the towering gothic magnificence of the Cathedral of St Jean. 

Nearby, at 36 Rue Trammasac, is La Machonnerie, another restaurant popular with locals and visitors alike. 

Its homely interior is decorated with paintings of the region, and owner Felix Guerin is usually on hand to provide friendly advice on his generally locally sourced dishes and what wines to drink with them.

The restaurant has a range of menus starting at €28 per person, and going up to €45 for the menu Dégustation de ripailles Lyonnaises. 

Amid the local specialities on offer are the likes of calf’s cheek with cream and mushroom sauce; the meat cooked to tender perfection. Also present is tablier de sapeur, whose name translates as ‘sapper’s apron’, a dish that can trace its origins at least to the mid 19th-century. 

Local tradition suggests it was named in honour of Marshall of France Boniface de Castellane. This much-decorated military man began his career in 1804 as a private soldier in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte and, defying the odds of his chosen profession, ended it more than 50 years later as military governor of Lyon. 

A great lover of the offal-based specialities of his adopted home, de Castellane is reputed to have either inspired or invented the dish, depending to whom you talk. 

Either way, it comprises a generous portion of tripe, marinated in white wine and then fried. In appearance, it is supposed to resemble the leather aprons once worn by the engineer corps of the French army. 

Thankfully, though, it tastes a lot better than the name suggests.


Find out more 

Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse
halledelyon.free.fr

Chez les Gones
www.chezlesgones.fr

L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges
http://www.bocuse.fr

Le Comptoir du Boeuf Tel: (+33) 4 78 92 82 35

Café Comptoir Abel

www.cafecomptoirabel.fr

Restaurant de Fourvière

www.latassee.fr

La Machonnerie

www.lamachonnerie.com