Le Sud Restaurant, Lyon

Bread and olive at Le Sud

One of my early thoughts when we decided to go to Lyon, the culinary capital of France, was to do a spot of Michelin star collecting. The only problem was that everywhere we looked at were very expensive. My usual trick of looking out for the cheaper lunchtime set menus didn't yield any results so we started to look for alternatives and decided upon Le Sud a brasserie owned by Paul Becouse, who also runs the city's only three star restaurant.

Even though it was 'only' a brasserie Le Sud still felt like it offered the full silver service. My linen napkin had a button hole with which you could use to attach it to your shirt, which of course I did.

A pot of Côte du Rhone - we had two

Having discovered that a 'pot' of wine was the Lyon equivalent of a carafe we decided to order a pot (or two) of Côte du Rhone. They were exceptional value at 12.60 EUR. The quality of the wine was easily on a par with anything else we'd drunk on the holiday was considerably cheaper than the rest of the wine list.

Ed loved the concept of the pot so much he bought one to take home with him.

Pumpkin and chestnut soup

I started with the pumpkin and chestnut soup. It was a lovely autumnal soup although I didn't get huge amounts of chestnut.

My main was a pan fried fish with light curry sauce, a choice inspired by a similar dish Mike had ordered the day before. The fish was delicately cooked and paired well with the curry sauce.

Fish with a curry sauce

For dessert I had the poire belle Hélène. A poached pair, fanned out to cover a ball of vanilla ice cream and surrounded by a pool of dark chocolate sauce. I loved the poached pair and vanilla ice cream but found the thick dark chocolate sauce a little too intense for my taste.

The service was discreet, efficient and friendly when required. The only oddity, in what was a very pleasant evening, was my trip to the gents. While the femmes and hommes cubicles were complete separate, le urinoirs were only a small partition away from the unisex hand basins. I couldn't help thinking everyone's modesty needed a little more protection.

Poire Belle Hélène

On the way home we stopped in at the Mama Shelter hotel for a final bottle of Côte du Rhone of the holiday. The hotel has a great bar with good music. It was pretty busy, but we were able to secure some seats at the bar in which to enjoy our bottle of wine.

Another bottle of Côte du Rhone in Mama Shelter

Le Sud
11 Place Antonin Poncet

69002

Lyon

France
+33 4 72 77 80 00

Lyon weekend: Les Confluences and lunch Les Sept Péchés du Plateau in Croix-Rousse

With the lion of lyon

On the final day of our trip to Lyon we decided to head over to the Les Confluences area of the city, an island in the middle of the river where the Rhône and Saône meet. I'll admit to not having looked into the history of the area, but I suspect it is very similar to London's Docklands. An area which has suffered industrial decline and has recently undergone huge regeneration (although probably not finance led).

Orange building - Les Confluences 

The area felt quite subdued on a sleepy Sunday morning, like an area which hasn't yet become fully self sustaining. (A bit like Canary Wharf on weekends 10yrs ago). Initially it felt like just us an a few joggers enjoying the riverside paths and autumn colours. There were a few families out promenading too.

There were some wonderfully modernist buildings like these orange and green ones I photographed. They somehow seemed very French.

Green twin - Les Confluences 

At the tip of the island is the Musée des Confluences, another modernist building. We decided not to go into the museum as we didn't have a lot of time left.

Musée des Confluences

After walking round the outside of the museum we hopped on a tram and then changed onto the metro to whip up to the Croix-Rousse part of the city in search of a late breakfast / lunch.

There was a fun fare taking place which had brought out the crowds. Being France on a Sunday the majority of places were also closed. I was beginning to become a little despondent in our search for a final meal of the trip and then we spied Les Sept Péchés du Plateau which was just opening up in the Place des Tapis. We took a seat on the terrace. This would do nicely.

Goats cheese quiche

We opted for one of the mid-range set menus (I can't remember the price, but I think it was around the 27 EUR mark).

The food was all good, but it didn't quite hit the heights set by Comptoir Chabert where we'd eaten on the Friday night. It felt like the kitchen was suffering from being too busy and in an attempt to keep up things were slightly fraying round the edges. My duck was served well done rather than the pink order and the accompanying gratin dauphinoise had been singed round the edges.

Duck with red berries

However, I'm probably being unnecessarily harsh. The service was very friendly, the food was definitely still good, it was highly pleasant sitting out on the terrace in the autumn sunshine and lunch was immeasurably better than the soggy sandwich I thought we might have to settle for just an hour before.

Tarte au citron

Les Sept Péchés du Plateau
3 Place des Tapis

69004

Lyon-4E-Arrondissement

France

Lyon Day 2: Markets and Vieux Lyon

Granola bowl at Le Kitchen Café

Our first, and only, full day in Lyon started with drift round the market in Place Jean Macé only a few minutes walk from our apartment. It was a classic French market with lots of cheese, meat and vegetable stalls. The complete opposite of the trendy markets we have here in London, it was centred on produce and people actually do their weekly shops. As well as all the food there was the obligatory stall selling pants.

After the market I was in need of some breakfast so we head to Le Kitchen Café only a five minute walk away. Both Mike and I had read a review of the place in the Guardian and were keen to check it out. I've no idea what the modern food trends are in France, but the café felt like a departure from a traditional French breakfast spot and not dissimilar to a breakfast spot in Sydney or London.

Their menu was pretty small and we all ended up with the granola, which actually turned out to be a bowl of yogurt, covered with a sprinkling of granola and some sliced nectarine on top. I had a herbal tea infusion as well. It was a lot lighter than what I'd usually have for breakfast, but that was probably a good thing considering the weekend we were having!

Outside Les Halles

After breakfast we walked up to Les Halles de Lyon - Paul Bocuse the famous covered market. The market is house in a modern glass and steel box and filled with high end food stalls. It's the type of place that in London would be a mecca for tourists, but everyone seemed to be French and I didn't hear many foreign accents as we wondered round.

About a third of the stalls in the market were small eateries, busy with the lunch trade. We meandered up an down every aisle gawking at the food without actually buying anything. (Flying back with only hand luggage ruled most things out.)

After the market we popped into the mini shopping mall next door to buy a birthday present for Becks.

Opera cakes inside the market

After buying Beck's birthday present we decided that we were in need of some lunch. We headed towards the island thinking we'd see somewhere to stop along the way. We didn't see anywhere which took our fancy before reaching the island so ended up at the touristy Café La Manille in the pedestrian heart of the island.

Lunch was solid, if unspectacular, but it we were getting pretty hungry by the time we found it so it met our needs nicely. It also provided me with the opportunity to have my only oringina of the holiday. It was also the only meal time (breakfasts excluded) where we didn't have a bottle of Côte du Rhone!

Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Suitably fortified we head off the western side of the island to the historic Vieux Lyon area of the city. We followed the crowds and climbed the steps up to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. We decided against going inside the cathedral and just admired it from the outside and then stood on the terrace soaking in the panoramic views over the city.

Ed and I with Lyon in the background

Having enjoyed the views we drifted back down the hill stopping briefly in the square outside the Cathédral Saint Jean Baptiste to take a photo along with lots of other tourists.

We then crossed back across the island, passing through Place Bellecour, and headed back to our apartment for a short rest before heading out for a night in Lyon!

All of the places I visited in Lyon have been added to my European adventures map.

Le Kitchen Café
34 Rue Chevreul

69007

Lyon

France

Café La Manille
33 Rue Tupin

69002

Lyon

France

The best bouchon in Lyon: Comptoir Chabert

Inside Comptoir Chabert

Or is it only the second best bouchon in Lyon?

Ed's family friend, Catherine, had tried to get us a reservation at her favourite bouchon in the city but they didn't have any tables left, so she booked us in at Comptoir Chabert instead.

It was, quite simply, a fantastic evening.

A selection of the starters

The 27 EUR menu has a single starter and not long after we sat down a plate containing two types of pâté and a salami hit the table. The bouchon was immediately living up to its reputation of being about all things pork.

Shortly long after the pâté arrived at our table a selection of big salad bowls were bought across. The most 'exciting' salad was the veal feet (top right), surprisingly mild and tender cubes of veal. The tastiest salads were the vegetarian potato and beetroot options, covered in sharp and tasty dressing. We also had mackerel and two types of pork. One that looked like thinly shaved bacon and the other a baloney. If I'm honest I wasn't that keen on either.

So generous were the salads that we had to be careful not to fill up on them as they were only the first course!

Bavette

The main courses were the only choice of the evening. There was a lot of offal of the menu. Head, trotters, sweatbreads and andouillette were all on offer. I whimped out and went for the safest option on the menu, the bavette steak topped with crispy shallots.

Accompany the bavette was a creamy and garlicky gratin dauphinoise. It was heaven.

Gratin Dauphinoise

Once we'd scraped the gratin dish clean, the cheese course was bought out. We had three cheeses to share, a boursin style soft cheese with garlic and herbs, a fresh cheese and half of a Saint-Marcellin (I think).

The fresh and Saint-Marcellin cheeses were my favourites and both appeared to be Lyon specialities as we saw the same cheeses in all of the markets we visited.

Cheese selection

The meal hit its peak with dessert as the big communal bowls arrived back at our table. We had a creme caramel, poached pears, rice pudding, stewed plums and a bucket of îles flottantes.

I enjoyed the poached pears and stewed plums. The rice pudding was sweet and creamy, but my favourite by a long was was the îles flottantes. I love crème anglais and the îles flottantes didn't disappoint and I helped myself to lashings from the huge share bowl.

A selection of the dessert

Everything about the evening was excellent, from the lively atmosphere in the small restaurant to the food which was on point. There wasn't a foot put wrong in anything we ate.

Comptoir Chabert is easily my favourite meal of 2015 so far. If this was the second best bouchon in Lyon I'd love to visit the best!

Comptoir Chabert
13 Quai Romain Rolland

69005

Lyon

France

There is a Comptoir Chabert at No 13 and No 14 Quai Romain Rolland. We visited No 13 which is on the left.

Lyon Day 1: London to Lyon and lunch at Brasserie des Brotteaux

My favourite drop of the holiday 

On Friday Ed, Mike and I took the Eurostar to Lyon for a long weekend in France's food capital.

It was an early start and there was a bit of a scrum at check-in, but the train really is a pleasant way to travel. We had a half hour hold up when we emerged from the chunnel as they checked the tracks for a suspected sighting of people on the line. As we were stationary we could see refugees on a bridge above the tracks looking down and, at one spot, blanks flung over barbed wire at the top of the fences. It was all a bit sobering.

Back underway the French countryside glided past at speed, although we couldn't make up the time lost and we arrived in Lyon forty minutes late.

Mike and Ed inside Brasserie des Brotteaux

Our first stop was Brasserie des Brotteaux a 100yr old brasserie located ten minutes walk north of the station. Due to the train delays we were late for our reservation, arriving just after their  kitchen closed at 2pm. However, they still welcomed us in an offering us a limited menu, presumably of dishes that they could knock out quickly.

We all opted for the lamb and shared our first and best bottle of Cote du Rhone of the holiday. The brasserie had a classic interior with tiled walls. I'm not sure if they were original tiles added 100yrs ago, but they were certainly classic.

Lamb

Lunch was definitely enjoyable, but the high standard of food we ate during the weekend and the fact it was on the first day, meant it slightly faded in the memory.

The mille feuille I ordered for dessert was a modern interpretation served on its side. I definitely enjoyed the créme patissiere that was gluing it all together. Mike's tarte au citron looked a picture.

If I remember correctly it was 30 EUR per person including wine and service which we all thought was great value.

Mille Feuille

After lunch we headed to the AirBnB apartment we had rented for the weekend. From the restaurant to the apartment was around a 40 minute walk through some of the more modern, and less interesting, parts of Lyon. However, we did get to see some brutalist concrete architecture. Some of which had held up better to the test of time than other parts...

Our apartment was better in real life than the photos and proved to be an excellent base for the weekend. All of the rooms had shutters, which I always love, as it means you get to sleep in the complete darkness.

Tarte au citron

After an hour or so relaxing in the apartment we headed down to the river to meet up with Catherine, a family friend of Ed's who lives in the city. She very kindly bought us all a drink at one of the river side bars and we sat and chatted about Lyon and her recent visit to see Ed's mum in London for an hour. Catherine speaks excellent English and has a witty sense of humour, very dryly destroying Ed's pronunciation. I'm just pleased she chose not to pass comment on my French!

Catherine had very kindly made a reservation for us at what she thought was the second best bouchon in Paris (the best being already fully booked). Thanking her for our drink we headed off to find the restaurant for what would be my favourite meal of 2015 so far.

La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière

Brasserie Brotteaux
1 Place Jules Ferry
69006
Lyon
France
www.brasseriedesbrotteaux.com

Dordogne: Paunat & Restaurant Chez Julien

The limestone village of Paunat

Sadly our holiday in the Dordogne was coming to an end. Having ticked off most of the places that we wanted to visit we decided to spend the day hanging around the village of Paunat where we were staying.

A picturesque limestone village, Paunat is on the pilgrimage trail. In the twelfth centurya pilgrims staff took root in village and grew into a tree. A large abbey was built at the site of the miracle. Although the monastery is no longer present, the large church of St Martia still dominates the village both in terms of its size and the bells which chime rather irregularly at 7am and 7pm daily.

The village is postcard perfect and I was surprised that all of the houses seemed quite large / high status. I'm not sure where the farm labourers stayed in centuries gone by. The only downside to the village as far as I was concerned is that it didn't have a boulangerie. I love being able to walk to the bakers to buy fresh bread, and maybe a croissant, every morning.

With no road signs in the village I also found it quite infuriating to navigate and it took me most of the week before I'd worked out which road to take in order to arrive at neighbouring town I was aiming for.

Our gîtes for the week

We ate twice at the village restaurant, Chez Julien, during our stay. On the first night we hungrily scoffed down our food after a long day travelling, so we returned on our last night for a more relaxed meal.

Chez Julien is a friendly and welcoming restaurant which probably explains why even in late summer they were still busy and you needed to book a table if you wanted to get in. On both occasions we visited there were a fair few English voices at neighbouring tables with expats and holiday makers coming in from the surrounding countryside for dinner.

A local brew from Limeuil

On our second visit I started the evening with a beer from the local brewery in the next village. When it came to the menu I decided to order local specialities that I either hadn't tried during the week or wanted to try again.

Cèpes mushrooms were in season so I went for the tartallete de cepes a la creme d'ail so that I could get in my last fix. For the main course I went for the confit du canard as I hadn't yet had any duck during the week.

The food was good, but it didn't feel like they were pushing any boundaries and that they have found a formula that they are comfortable sticking with. Every main course (on both nights) came served with the same vegetables, and not a very generous portion either.

After dinner it was great to be able to walk back to our gîtes across the village square and be in bed within minutes.

The next morning we were up early to drive back to Bordeaux train station. Despite one wrong turn we made it back to the train station in the centre of the city much more easily than I was expecting.

Tartallete de cepes a la creme d'ail

Confit du canard

Chocolate tart

Dordogne: The Panoramic Gardens at Limeuil & the Grotte de Rouffignac et Lascaux II

The Panoramic Gardens at Limeuil

The Wednesday of our week in France was a lazy day. Becks and I didn't leave the gîtes until early afternoon and we didn't want to travel far, so we headed down the road to Les jardins panoramiques de Limeuil.

The gardens are at the top of the hill above the village Limeuil with sweeping views of the Vereze and Dordogne rivers joining together. Perhaps it was a little hot to enjoy the gardens fully, but with the exception of the section over looking the rivers (which was stunning), I was a little underwhelmed les jardins panoramiques.

In contrast to Wednesday, Thursday was an early start as we were up and off to see some caves.

We started by heading to Le Font du Gaume. To protect the caves they only allow eight visitors a day with thirty tickets pre-sold and fifty available on a first come first served basis. We arrived at eight thirty only to see a long queue of people already waiting for tickets. We stood in a puddle of an hour, grumbling as people pushed into the queue, to inevitably miss out on tickets.

Plan B was to head for the Grotte de Rouffignac. Electric trains took is on a rather chilly one hour journey into the limestone caves. Caves were filled with over two hundred and fifty paintings of horses, buffalo, mammoths and more. Just as impressive as the paintings were the number of nests (?) that had been made by bears who hibernated in the caves. Virtually every wall was lined with claw marks from where the bears had been sharpening their claws.

Pumpkins in the gardens

On a cave roll we headed onto Lascaux II to see some cave paintings in full technicolour. The original Lascaux caves are closed to visitors and two of the most decorative tunnels have been faithfully re-created in the hills above Montignac. An English speaking tour wasn't available for a couple of hours so we jumped onto the next available tour in French. The Lascaux caves were smaller than I was expecting, but the ceilings were crammed full of horses.

It was then home for an elegant dinner!

Restaurant Review: Le Vieux Logis, Tremolat, France

The Coxes before dinner

Before we departed for France I had a look at the, infuriating to navigate, Michelin Guide website to see if there were any recommended restaurants within striking distance of our gîtes in Paunat. The one Michelin starred Le Vieux Logis stood out as top choice. Although much like the Michelin guide, the restaurant has an annoying website, so it was difficult to find out too much and I had to put my faith in the guide.

I'm lucky enough to get  couple of fine dining opportunities a year and look forward to them with gusto. However, I think it would be fair to say there was a little trepidation in our group at the prospect of an evening of French haute cuisine. I was getting nervous that my dining choice would go down like a lead balloon.

The gradens od Le Vieux Logis

After a turn round the garden, we decided to skip a drink on the terrace and headed straight into the dining room to take our seats for the evening.

My default these days is to opt for the set menu as I, mistakenly as it turned out, think of them as the best way to experience all that a restaurant has to offer. Instead we opted for the al la carte menu and the mains, at €50 a go, might have made me draw my breath, but they turned out to be excellent value.

In addition to the courses we ordered, we were treated to an amuse bouche, two mini starters, a pre-dessert, kick ass petit fours and, in the case of Peter's dessert, a double shot of Armagnac on the side. It was generous.

Amuse bouche of rosemary and cheese foccacia, duck croquet with homemade ketchup and salmon with walnut oil and pickles

It is difficult to have favourites when the food was so consistently good. The fois gras crème brûlée was a fun twist on a classic. It was a bit challenging to eat with your brain telling you it should be sweet, while savoury notes appeared on the palate.

The high points of the mains, for me, were the sauces. The tomato essence that was poured over my sea bass was a heady liquor of summer. While the taste of the veal reduction I managed to sneak from Becks' main was excellent too.

The meal finished on a high with the red fruit ravioli petit fours. As the small parcel slipped off the spoon onto my tongue it exploded to give a burst of summer fruits in the mouth. I've no idea how they did it, but I'd love to know.

Thankfully my fears for the evening were unfounded and I think it is safe to say the evening was enjoyed by all. The food was generous, pretty faultless and the relaxed service created a welcoming atmosphere.

Quinelle of crab with apple, parsley, chive and a fennel cream

Fois gras crème brûlée

Filet of swordfish with fresh Cabécou cheese, summer vegetables and a tomato and olive oil sauce

Roast veal, boulangere potatoes, cepes tarlette, bernaise sauce, pomme purée and a taragon sauce

Three cuts of roast lamb, parlsey sauce and gnochi with nuts

A pre-dessert of choux pastry buns one with a walnut cream and a the other with a vanilla cream with a walnut brittle

Chocolate Grand Cru with basil and lemon

Figs cooked in their own juices

Summer fruits with meringue Chantilly and a strawberry sorbet and hibiscus

Petit fours: praline chocolates and red fruit ravioli