Journal...day 6

Vignt sept Juillet

J'ai dîné avec Pierre hier soir a la restaurant Le Grain de Folie.  So last night I went for dinner with Pierre in Croix Rousse.  We had to look quite a bit as we couldn’t decide on the menu at some places and others were a bit too expensive for our liking.  It’s amazing how many small restaurants are hidden away, its like a maze, with roads winding in all directions…we had no idea where we were going, so we just walked around, looked at menus and kept on going.  We came across some  cool places like a tapas bar, but Pierre didn’t like the menu even though I thought it was a good Spanish tapas selection.   Another restaurant was very brightly coloured and had an inside terrace (a lot of these places have a small seating area inside the restaurant and then a terrace on the inside which is the preferece of most people) and an awesome menu that had foie gras and escargot on the menu, but with unsual ingredients .  The kitchen was quite tiny (as I later discovered most are) maybe anywhere from 40-60m2.
Anyway, the place we settled on was close to where I will be living from August, its called Le Grain de Folie (the craziness). It looked quite smart from the  inside, but  that belied a more playful terrace. Brightly coloured placemats (it seems a lot of places use a thickish paper placemat that can be discarded after use), lights that changed colours and just a quirky but comfortable atmosphere.

After looking at the menu we decided to choose the set menu.  Most of the small restaurants and brasseries offer the dishes at a la carte prices, but then also offer a set menu of 3 entrees, 3 mains (plats) and a choice of dessert or cheese and is slightly cheaper than choosing individual dishes.

For wine I had un verre(glass) de chardonnay and Pierre had something fume (I can ‘t remember exactly).  Mine was good, slightly dry and fruity but it actually opened up after we had an amuse bouche of chilled cucumber and avo soup.  For entrees we both had froids veloute d'artichaut avec magret séché (cold artichoke veloute with dried magret).  This was fantastic, the subtle flavour of the artichoke coming through beautifully and with the flavour of the magret bursting through, with the rich creamy flavour of the fat and the saltiness of the cured meat.  The only downside with the dish was that they had what seemed like pickled mushrooms in the centre which completely did not work.  The acidity from the pickling process ran rampant across the velvety veloute.  Pierre commented that the veloute wasn’t thick enough, but I think he was just being overly critical. :P

For mains I had lamb shank with garden vegetables (Jarret d'agneau avec légumes du jardin) which was good but the shank could have been cooked for longer as the connective tissue hadn’t broken down completely yet.  The veggies were tasty too, baby potatoes (petit pomme de terre), batons of carrots (carottes), fine beans (haricot fine) and some white vegetable which was almost like a turnip, but Pierre didnt know the English word for it ; he said it was some long white vegetable that grows in the ground.  Pierre had the poisson d’epice (fish with spices).  The fish was cod and was beautifully cooked, and crusted with a devine combination of cardomom seeds, seschuan pepper, coriander and fennel seeds and served with the same garden veg and a beurre blanc.

For dessert we both chose noeville (spelling ?)chocolat avec coeur de caramel et glace fraise.  This was basically a chocolat fondant with a caramel centre and was served with a strawberry icecream. The menu cost 26euros and with my wine, my bill came to 29.5euros.

Afterwards, we walked around Croix Rousse and chilled for a bit by a vantage point that overlooked Lyon.

Saturday morning i met up with Mark-Anthony and his group of students from the States.  They have been doing a tour of France for a month and had been spending the week in Lyon while going to the Institut Paul Bocuse.  Mark does food anthropology and this particular course was focused on French gastronomy.  The students were all between 15-17.  We headed to a market in Vieux Lyon (old lyon)  and wow, this place is like a chefs wet dream...

First of all, I saw oysters that were the size of my hand !! and some smaller ones too but i have never seen oysters that big in my life, i didnt even know you could get them that big.  There was a guy cooking paella and rotisserie chickens, cooking some potatoes in all the collected fat.  The smell was like that of a Sunday roast. :D …the variety and quality of vegetables available was overwhelming, I can’t even start to name everything as i would go on forever.  I had noticed that in supermarkets you didnt find fish or chickens or steaks, mainly pre-sliced hams or smoked salmon….well at the market they had everything : onglet, hanger steaks, sweetbreads, brains, testicles, tonges from veal and lamb, rabbits, chickens and pheasants with the heads still on…terrine de campagne, fromage de tete !

As for fish,  there were whole fish, salmon, prawns, squid, mussels, trout, sea snails and many more fish that I don’t know…

Ok, I guess I have to tell you about the veggies….so the herbs for instance are kept in big crates in bunches and you choose how much of what you want and the seller packs it in paper for you.  Same with the salads : you choose a head of what you want and the seller packs it for you.   And they had like 10 different varieties as well as rocket, english spinach, mizuna.

The variety of berries available is completely stupifying :  I saw red currants, black currants, white currants (I had only ever seen these in a book before), raspberries, blueberries, black berrries, mulberries, strawberries).

Fresh mushrooms which looked like yellow pine rings, and some other kinds that I didnt recognise…
Melons, peaches, nectarines, apples, oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes…more than 10 different kinds of tomatoes, plenty varieties of zucchini, onions and garlic, peppers, aubergine

OK, that’s all I’m willing to write in my lazy state…I could probably go on for another 2-3 pages. You guys will just have to look at the pics. :D

So after having a snack, we headed to the metro at Vieux Lyon and met our tour guide. Madam Deveaux, a 60-70 something lady who is originally from Austria ;  so I had a little chat with her in German.  She took us up to the cathedral that overlooks Lyon and gave us the history of the city : Lyon is over 2000 years old, having being founded in around 45BC. Cape town is only around 360 years old,  if Ii remember correctly.  This particular cathedral is dedicated to Mary after the city was under threat of attack from Barbarians from the North East (Germany/Austria area) ; the people of Lyon prayed and said that if they weren’t attacked they would build a big church to honour and worship Mary.

We went outside to see the panoramic view of Lyon, where you can see a solitary skyscraper called the pencil tower ( I dont need to explain why its called this !), and then we walked a short way to a Roman theatre that had been excavated and is now used for concerts and show.  Seeing the amphitheatre  made me realise how ingenious the Romans were in their time.  There was a band doing sound tests while we were there and all I could think about was what the acoustics would be like if there had to be some good old Drum ‘n Bass pumping. J

We walked back to the metro and were then treated to a tour of some of the houses in the area which still retain their original spiral staircases and wells.  The buildings are beautiful in their simplistic design and one really feels as if you are living in another time.  While walking around I found a small shop selling only absinthe so I bought a bottle of one which is made with a Lyonnaise recipe from 1883. The maze-like streets are lined with restaurants, brasseries and bouchons (bouchon is the name for traditional Lyonnaise food made from offal which was served to the working class as it was cheaper than using expensive cuts and back in the day, the driver of a carriage would get a bale of hay for his horse as well).

We then made our way to the tete d’or park (head of gold) and had lunch there.  I had bought a baguette with coppa, confit aubergine, tomato and rocket…flippen good).  We also had some strawberries and goats cheese as well as some confit garlic that we bought at the market and some gelee de fruits (gelified fruits) for dessert.  The students had some time to waste so Mark, Jess and I went to the botanical gardens of Lyon and then to the zoo where they had deer, ducks, pelicans, flamingos, bulls and even a giraffe.

Around 5 :30pm the park closed so we headed back to our hotel and everyone chilled and took a much welcomed shower.  I had an apéritif of rose that I bought at the market and then Mark and the students went for dinner at the Paul Bocuse brasserie Ouest while I met up with some guys from the institute for a burger at a cool place in Bellecour called Marcels.  I had a wicked beef burger with raclette, bacon, confit onions and fries.  Then we went for a drink near where the market was and chilled for a bit.  I had a Rio beer which was half grapefruit juice, half stella artois and a shot of grenadine.

It was almost 12 by the time we were done so I headed home and crashed..Long, busy day… J
a bientôt !