Locals carry knives in Lyon, not for a fight but to cut off a slice of cured sausage, taste some pheasant pâté, rosette or a creamy St Marcellin cheese. Sunday mornings are reserved for a stroll around Les Halles Paul Bocuse, the giant indoor food emporium named after Lyon’s most famous chef. Local bouchon restaurants still offer the robust recipes of Les Mères (the first female chefs), lovingly prepared in the most traditional way. Yet a new guard of inventive chefs – many of whom have trained outside France – is back in Lyon, bringing flair and fusion and being made surprisingly welcome in this very traditional gastronomic spot. I was in Lyon for the 16th Bocuse d’Or, the biennial international chefs’ Olympics (won this time by the US) and caught up with 10 food experts for their pick of the city’s best restaurants.
Le Kitchen Café
Nineteen of the most sought-after seats in Lyon are in this corner restaurant in Lyon’s university district. Chef Connie Zagora and pâtissier Laurent Ozan serve breakfast, a weekday lunch and operate the only “dessert bar” in Lyon. The best seats are the two stools at the kitchen bar, where guests can watch Connie put together a dried duck breast with broccoli, nori (seaweed), clementine and sesame, a Norwegian fjord trout with buckwheat, cauliflower and shitake mushrooms or a shredded pork shoulder with pumpkin and root vegetables (three courses for €23). Breakfast is customised granola, Laurent’s amazing pastries, hot drinks and fruit juice. Lunch starts at midday, happy customers celebrating their reservation with a chestnut kir or a Polish vodka. There’s lots of window space and a constant stream of people popping in for takeaway Tonka bean and dark chocolate cookies, slices of marble cake or, the bestseller, Swedish-style cinnamon buns, stacked like tiles in wooden spice drawers.
• 34 rue Chevreul, + 33 6 03 36 42 75, lekitchencafe.com.
Open Weds-Sun 8.30am-6-3pm
Recommended by Ludovic Mey of Les Apothicaires
Café Sillon
A star of the new generation of young Lyonnais chefs, Mathieu Rostaing-Tayard’s cooks dishes to make other chefs weep. He changes the menu once a fortnight but retains a startling variety of produce: tiny citrus fruits, seaweed, rare caviar lemons and Buddha’s hands (citron fruits) are stacked up alongside a dozen different lettuces, so there’s always a feeling that you are tasting rare, exquisite combinations. It helps that the decor is simple: dark blue walls, wooden farmhouse tables and grey bench seats. The three-course lunch is €23 and dinner €38 and there are only two options for each course: grilled squid, kombu seaweed, root vegetables, mustard and hazelnut versus sweetbreads in tempura, cress juice with eel, apple and green radish for starters, followed by barbecued lamb with black olives, peppers, cardoon and juniper or the red mullet, sea urchin, sesame, star anise and cabbage. The Italian red dessert wine, chinato, seems to complement everything sweet that comes out of the kitchen.
• 46 avenue Jean Jaurès, +33 4 78 72 09 73, cafe-sillon.com. Tues-Sat (closed Sat lunch).
Recommended by Thierry Daraize, chef and Montreal-based food expert
Bouchon Thomas
No one told chef Thomas Ponson that you can’t be all things to all people. After opening Restaurant Thomas 15 years ago, he added a bistro, a tapas bar, a bouchon and a private dining room, all bearing his name and facing each other on the same street, half a block from the Rhône. He manages the mini-empire from the large restaurant but makes sure each place maintains its own distinctive style. The bouchon serves les grands classiques of Lyon “with a twist of the Ardèche”, says Ponson, “it’s where I come from.” He does an excellent cervelle des canuts (meaning “silk workers’ brains”) – a fromage blanc with vinegar and herbs that comes with roasted sausage with pistachios – part of the menu lyonnais, three courses for €27. The restaurant serves a more sophisticated tataki of sirloin or quail and foie gras tart with truffles. The bistro magics into a swinging wine bar in the evenings and the tapas bar is for grignoter (grazing on) tortilla, patatas bravas and marinated prawns (€3 a dish).
• 1,3,6,8, rue Laurencin, +33 4 72 60 94 53, restaurant-thomas.com. Mon-Fri lunch and dinner
Recommended by Célia Rostand of Bistrots Beaujolais
Burgundy Lounge
It is extremely pleasant to spend an evening overlooking the Saône doing some serious wine swirling and discussing one’s choices with sommelier Hervé Baligand. Downstairs is a giant steel bar and tasting lounge; upstairs are thick stone walls, hefty beams and a cool, comfy, space-station seating area. Bottles of burgundy are suspended horizontally in glinting cabinets – a museum where you can drink the exhibits. Chef Axel Ruga matches local wine to local produce – clients choose the wine first. Lunch is €29 for three courses (Monday to Friday only), a chargrilled fillet of bream or turbot with leeks in tarragon and wine, or try the excellently titled snails in disguise on the tasting menu. There are more than 10,000 bottles to choose from so maybe take the Le Vaporetto home.
• 24 quai Sainte-Antoine, +33 4 72 04 04 51, burgundylounge.fr. Open seven days a week, lunch Mon-Fri, tasting menu only Sat eve).
Recommended by Anthony Robin, chief caviste at wine merchant Guyot
Les Apothicaires
Despite Lyon’s daunting reputation as the gastronomic capital of France, it’s “a very welcoming place for new chefs”, says Savoie-born Ludovic Mey, who opened Les Apothicaires with Brazilian wife Tabata a year ago. The couple met while working at Lyon’s Marguerite restaurant and prepare delicate Franco-Latino-Nordic dishes in the stylish open kitchen. Diners can have four, five or six courses in the evening (€42-€52) or a three-course lunch – oeuf parfait with beetroot, caramelised malt, lemon thyme, followed by whiting, butternut confit, black radish and XO sauce, and to finish, pineapple, Szechuan pepper with lovage sorbet, all for €26. A cabinet of curiosities fills one of the walls, along with shelves of homemade pickles, cookbooks, souvenirs from the couple’s travels abroad and antique prints of apothecary herbs.
• 23 rue de Sèze +33 4 26 02 25 09, lesapothicairesrestaurant.com. Mon-Fri lunch and dinner
Recommended by Hubert Vergoin, head chef at Substrat
Les Trois Dômes
In a city of elegant riverside architecture, the Sofitel is indisputably the ugliest building in Lyon. However, close your eyes and take the lift to the eighth-floor restaurant for panoramic views of the city, the domes of the Hôpital de la Charité belltower and the Grand Hôtel-Dieu (hence the restaurant’s name) and, on a clear day, Mont Blanc. Chef Christian Lherm deals in the region’s top-shelf ingredients: Bresse chicken, crayfish, scallops, lobster and sauces that have surnames. Whispers, starchy napkins and airy spaces give a feeling that the head of Interpol may be at the next-door table (Interpol’s Headquarters is in Lyon), but the au fil des saisons menu is just €36 for two courses and you can smell the wonderful lobster bisque from afar.
• 20 quai Gailleton, +33 4 72 41 20 97, les-3-domes.com. Tues-Dat lunch and dinner
Recommended by Danielle Pierrefeu, president of Les Gastronomes de Lyon
Le Garet
This most typical of the bouchons Lyonnais has a bawdy, jovial, chaotic feel with dark wood panelling, crooked oil-paintings, low-hanging lights and porcelain piggies as tableware, reminding diners of the origin of most of their food. The lunch menu, three courses for €19.50, is hearty and based on the kind of meals favoured by those doing long shifts at Lyon’s silk factories. Today, it suits locals and tourists who want a sturdy meal before visiting the nearby fine arts museum, opera house and city hall. Chef Emmanuel Ferra specialises in things that sound better left in French. Cervelle meunière (brains in flour, lemon and parsley), tête de veau ravigote (calf’s head with shallots and capers), andouillettes (chitterlings sausages), tablier de sapeur (crumbed tripe) and rillettes d’oie (shredded goose slow-cooked in fat) are all celebrated local dishes, served in challengingly large portions.
• 7 rue du Garet, +33 4 78 28 16 94, no website. Mon-Fri lunch and dinner
Recommended by Mathieu Viannay, head chef of La Mère Brazier
Le Café du Peintre
The finest quenelle de brochet, a golden, potato-shaped pike soufflé floating in a sea of creamy lobster sauce, is served at Florence Périer’s Café du Peintre. It is one of the traditional recipes Mère Périer picked up from her mother and grandmother. All of her immediate family work in Lyon’s restaurants – photos of them as children hang alongside mirrors and old wine boxes on the bouchon walls. The cafe serves a mâchon (a selection of pork products washed down with a jug of Beaujolais) at nine in the morning, although for most dishes Périer admits to using “healthier, lighter ingredients” nowadays. At lunchtime, the place is full of lawyers, tourists and locals, tucking in to a parfait de volaille with fig chutney or braised beef and carrots. On their evenings off, local chefs sit down for a “when in Lyon” herring and potato salad (€10), a dozen super-sized Burgundy snails (€17) or a whole St Marcellin cheese (€6). It’s noisy and convivial; people are always hugging each other.
• 50 boulevard de Brotteaux, +33 78 52 52 61, lecafedupeintre.com. Mon-Fri lunch, Thur-Friday dinner
Recommended by Renée Richard of La Fromagerie Mère Richard, Les Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse
L’Ébauche
At the bottom of the city’s central hill, Croix-Rousse, is this tiny, trendy joint, surrounded by so many trompe-l’oeils, you could easily walk into the Sâone thinking you were stepping into a shopfront. The murals are part of Lyon’s urban heritage and L’Ébauche has its own, a face on the outside shutter, invisible when the restaurant is open (importantly on a Sunday evening, when most other places are closed). Chef Mélik Debadji, in his first “solo” restaurant, creates bistronomic masterpieces from fresh, local produce. Lunch (€20) could be mussels with cream of onion, pickled beetroot, dill oil and broth or a three-course evening meal – Jerusalem artichokes, snails and herb ricotta followed by rabbit ravioli with carrot, spinach with amaretto then apple confit, vanilla cream, balsamic and cider sorbet (€30).
• 4 rue de la Martinière, +33 4 78 58 12 58, on Facebook. Weds(dinner only)-Sun
Recommended by Mathieu Rostaing-Tayard of Café Sillon
Le Potager des Halles
Facing L’Ébauche and a swaying footbridge over the Sâone, Le Potager has a saloon-bar vibe with an overhanging gallery and blond-wood bar bustling with locals. Big tables, school chairs and lots of chalkboards make it an anarchic sports bar, with paintings instead of screens. A spiral staircase in the corner leads to a narrow dining area where three-course lunch costs €19. In the evening, there might be jumbo quail with quince and celery, pigeon cooked in a smoked tea stock or a 50-day matured Galician steak and prices can escalate considerably. The quartier will become even more food-orientated when La Halle de la Martinière reopens later in the year. The oldest covered market in Lyon, it may never match the expensive delights of Les Halles-Paul Bocuse across the river but it’s going to be full of organic fruit and vegetables, chocolates, fine groceries and a tapas bar.
• 3 rue de la Martinière, +33 4 72 00 24 84, lepotagerdeshalles.com. Tues-Sat lunch and dinner
Recommended by Jean-Christophe Garot, Maître d’Hôtel of Burgundy Lounge
View all comments >