SKIP PARIS, GO TO LYON

~ Posted by Julie Kavanagh, January 9th 2012

It's famed for its restaurants, but the dozen times I've been to Paris in the last two years, I've never had a memorable meal. There's the same menu in virtually all the local bistros and brasseries (filets de hareng, soupe à l'oignon, confit de canard etc...). So last week, when the Eurostar pulled into the Gare du Nord at 18.27, my son Joe and I legged it to the Gare de Lyon. We were in Lyon by nine.

The food critic Curnonsky called Lyon the "the world capital of gastronomy". That was in 1935. The tradition goes back to the 16th century when Nostrodamus gave away his jam-making secrets in his 1555 "Traité des Fardemens et Confitures"; and the 1920s and 1930s were the start of the celebrity chefs and "mothers", like Mère Brazier, who won three Michelin stars for inventing simple, sophisticated cooking that later evolved into nouvelle cuisine.

I treated Joe, who works as a chef at Trullo in London, to dinner at Mère Brazier. It now has two stars under Mathieu Viannay, who has given his own 21st century twist to Mère Brazier's signature dishes. The original Rue Royale premises have been revamped and it's all pretty kitsch and garish (it badly needs a lighting expert). As usual in Michelin restaurants, the freebies provide the best moment: an amuse-gueule of an escargot wrapped in Iberian ham, fried as a fluffy wonton and hovering above an eggcup of plush carrot soup. Joe immediately texted his boss.

If we ever go again, I'd have the emblematic Mère B dish of poulet demi-deuil: it's steamed Bresse chicken which looks unappetisingly as if it has hives. But the black blotches under the skin are truffles and it was divided with such reverence into two portions for our neighbouring table that my mouth was watering. Joe's most memorable course was the pigeon. En route to the loo I saw the dapper Viannay, standing by the kitchen door, directing his team like a conductor in front of his orchestra, and asked if he'd used sous-vide (the fashionable new technique) to make the pigeon so moist. "Non madame," he said with such lofty disdain that I might as well have asked if it was microwaved.

From the outside Les Halles Paul Bocuse is a concrete monstrosity, inside it's the most spectacular foodie emporium I've encountered. Every stall is run by an artisan, and for quality and plenitude it makes a mockery of any Paris market I've been to. Our suitcases on the Eurostar back home were stuffed with boudin blanc, ris de veau, rognon de veau, duck breast stuffed with fois gras, girolles, Agen prunes...

We'll be skipping Paris again soon: Lyon gets under your skin like those truffles. Next time I'll try Tsuyoshi Arai's "Au 14 Février"—a fusion of Japanese and Lyonaise classics—which is tipped to get its first Michelin star.

Julie Kavanagh is a contributing editor of Intelligent Life