Where to eat in Lyon?

What an atmosphere! Luc and Sylvie Minaire spare no effort to make their little bouchon, behind the Musée de l'Imprimerie (Printing Museum), a friendly place to get your appetite going.

 

Executives, retired people, secretaries and shop assistants arrive with a smile on their faces. The boss shakes your hand, immediately offers you a jug of Morgon, then takes you through the list of dishes: from oyster mushroom salad to snails from Burgundy, via hot saucisson in brioche and brawn with parsley, from calf's tongue in spicy sauce with homemade purée to quenelles, you can't go wrong. As for the bread made by Luc Minaire, a former baker, it alone is almost worth making the trip.

It would be hard to find a bouchon more typical than this one, where some scenes in L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (The Watchmaker of Saint Paul) were filmed. It is hidden in the maze of little streets bordering the west of the Place des Terreaux, not far from the Hot Club de Lyon, the oldest jazz club in France, founded in 1948! Moreover, things swing in the dining room thanks to boss Yves Rivoiron, who fondly watches over a young and dynamic team of ladies.

 

For starters, all the most emblematic dishes of bouchon cuisine are served in rapid succession, in generous salad bowls filled to the brim: curly endive with bacon cubes and hard-boiled eggs, venison terrine, rosette, saveloy, pig's trotters, brawn in vinaigrette, gras-double (tripe), lentil salad... You can then choose your main course (chicken liver flan, chicken with vinegar sauce, pork-cheek stew, kidneys in Madeira sauce, black pudding with apple, etc) and your dessert. This is an address that will delight your taste buds.

This bouchon boasts first and foremost an exquisite setting, a stone's throw from the basilica of Saint-Martin d'Ainay: two small, dark, wood-panelled dining rooms with a patina achieved through decades of good humour.

 

Here you will find the great classics, from chicken with morel mushrooms to kidneys in Madeira sauce, and for dessert, a selection of homemade sweetmeats.

Here is a chef who does not talk a lot of hot air - the industrious, laconic type, who has decided to let his cuisine speak for him. After a science-based baccalaureate and several experiences in consumer catering for a hotel group, Matthieu Viannay first of all opened a highly successful Mediterranean bistro (Les Oliviers) in 1998 before setting up under his own name in 2001. The decor of his star-rated restaurant - light, modern and functional, chic and sober - was created by Vavro, Paul Bocuse's favoured designer, who has combined arabesques and straight lines, dark parquet and blue novelty chandeliers.

 

The cuisine here is "consistent with contemporary cravings" (in the words of the chef), both tasty and simple, light and succulent, based on top quality ingredients, without lapsing into the "religion of the product", which Matthieu Viannay playfully mocks. This rationalist opportunely reminds us that cuisine is the art of transforming meat or fish, thanks to the work of the chef. The spotlight is generally on the Mediterranean: fish, shellfish and olive oil are more in favour than cream, butter and Bresse poultry.

 

For starters, we devoured a fricassee of ormers with mushrooms and pine kernels, served with a mushroom and hazelnut emulsion sauce; then we wolfed down perfectly tender free-range pork from Cantal, cooked Rossini style with a slice of pan-fried foie gras, served with ratte potatoes; lastly, for dessert, we succumbed to a warm honey madeleine with fromage blanc sorbet, coffee macaroon with caramel ice cream, and citrus fruit jelly with tea ice cream: light, distinctive and full of flavour - a delight. Under the inspired iron rule of sommelier Gladys Isard, we progressed smoothly from a François Merlin Condrieu 2003 to an Eric Texier Mâcon Bussières from 2002, then to a Côte-Rôtie 2002 from Domaine Burgaud.

 

As for the prices, they are extremely low, with a two-course menu (starter/main course or main course/dessert) at €28 (approx. £19), a full menu at €32 (approx. £22) and a market menu at €46 (approx. £31).

 

Opened in 1864, this great historical café has partly retained its Second Empire decor, completed (after a successful restoration) by marble pedestal tables, leather bench seats and heavy drapes at the entrance.

 

Once a place of negotiation for diamond merchants (they are said to have used the mirrors to communicate discreetly) and a meeting place for politicians and travelling salesmen, this institution today attracts a mixed bag of people: in the late afternoon, while Lyon's bright young things drink coffee and fill ashtrays, mobile in one hand and iPod in the other, a few couples with greying hair sip tea. In the early evening the atmosphere is cosier and less smoky, and you can sit down to dine on a carefully prepared dish of the day (baby vegetable risotto). The menu focuses on world cuisine.