As I mentioned earlier, we timed this trip to Lyon to coincide with La Fête des Lumières. It’s held every year around December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. As the story goes, her intercession prevented a 17th-century plague epidemic in the city. We figured that we’d have a better chance at a hotel room and restaurant reservations by getting here a couple of days in advance of the festival. So far, so good.
Last night we had dinner at a very traditional Lyon restaurant, Café Comptoir Abel. This establishment has been in business for nearly 90 years. La Cuisine Lyonnaise is hearty, working-class chow. It utilizes all of the offal parts of cattle and swine. We went here last summer and the food was a little heavy for my appetite in warm weather; however, it works well in winter. I started out with an artichoke bottom with green beans, while Julian had the terrine. Dinner was crawfish gratin for him, tongue with a tomato, caper, and cornichon sauce for me. (That sound you just heard was my sister and niece moaning “EEEUW!!” in unison.) I’ve only had tongue a few times before, but this was the tenderest I’d had. Julian’s mother made tongue years ago for him, but he said hers was more like shoe leather.
Café Comptoir Abel.
About to bite my tongue.
Today we took the cog-rail train up to the Croix-Rousse neighborhood in search of a North African restaurant we visited last year. We found it: Le Montana. Julian had hoped to get some fresh sardines like he had there last year, but the proprietor said that was only a summer menu item. So he got a chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemons, and I got a lamb tagine with prunes. I also got a small tumbler of mulled wine, which was very tasty.
Tonight’s dinner was in Vieux (Old) Lyon, at a place called Daniel & Denise. This is a traditional-with-a-twist Lyon restaurant, heavy on the sausage, offal, and eggs. I had pumpkin soup with ham and a poached egg, followed by a veal dish and floating island for dessert. The latter was a huge puff of meringue shot through with traditional Lyonnaise praline atop a pool of custard. Julian had salmon sashimi with a remoulade sauce, sausage in brioche, chicken with morel sauce, and lemon sorbet.
Preparations for the Fête des Lumières kicked into high gear this afternoon. It’s the equivalent of dress rehearsals for a play. Huge light arrays are positioned throughout the city to flash onto various façades. The walk leading downhill from Croix-Rousse is festooned with numerous light displays. The statue in Place des Jacobins is enveloped in a clear dome to resemble an old clock. On our way back from dinner, we waited to see if the light show on the façade of Cathédral St. Jean would be practiced. Unfortunately, no. Julian struck up a conversation with a fellow photographer who took the train down from Paris this evening and will return there tomorrow morning. (Okay, dear, you’re not the most obsessive-compulsive person in town.) We also talked to a Lyon local who was trying to avoid the crush of well over a million people descending on the city. On our way back to the hotel, we watched the light show on the Basilica. It was coordinated with lights on the Palace of Justice and spots on the hill in between. At one point the lights were pulsing like a beating heart.
Despite the preparations and the crowds about to appear, Lyon strikes us both as a working person’s city. It was the center of the French fabric trade, thanks to the invention of the Jacquard loom here. Julian characterized Paris as more of a Disneyland city – everyone seems to be a tourist, especially in certain neighborhoods. Lyon’s also more human scale than its sister to the north. We’re still going to Paris at the end of our trip, but Lyon has grabbed a prominent place in our affections.
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