We rolled in on a high speed train from Marsailles and walked across town under the bluest skies, and the weight of our packs. We decided Lyon felt much more French than the Riviera, where the menus and the way of life still felt like Italy. As we walked through town, I noticed the Presse signs, which instantly served as a memento from home. One of my favorite restaurants in Seattle is Cafe Presse, and as I discovered in Lyon they borrowed the signage from the French newsstands for their restaurant. As Ariel pointed out, Cafe Presse has an assortment of magazines, which they source from Small Changes, the wholesale magazine distribution company his mother started in 1977; It seems they were able to expand on the French idea of Presse as something even more inviting than words in print.
Lyon is a pretty city with old buildings, glorious fountains, and lots of wide open spaces to roam, a quality that can be rare for a larger city. (In 2012 Lyon had a population of 720,890).
There are intriguing pieces of art placed throughout the city, like this flower-petal-tree:
Also there is a giant park in the Northeast corner of the city called Tête d'Or. We walked through this giant gate and suddenly there were so many wonderful activites! We did a paddleboat cruise around the lake with our American coffees au lait. We saw ducks, geese and turtles playing and doing somersaults in the water; It almost seemed as though they were working for tips the way they worked the crowd. They were adorable.
After the paddleboats we walked through the park on a meandering trail, took a mini trainride with a sweet French conductor who ran the family business with his wife. She sold tickets and ice cream, and we watched her play with their English bulldog: a cute, tired guy who drank water from an Evian bottle.
Finally, we took a stroll through the free (yes, free!) zoo.
I wish I could say our meal at the Bouchon that night was our favorite, but it wasn't. It was heavy and fatty and we realized that as much as we love French cooking techniques, and the passion the French consistently put into their food, the traditional French dishes are not our favorite. The highlight of the Bouchon meal was Ariel's dish: a quenelle in lobster sauce. I had never had a quenelle before, and it was definitely something to write home about.
Another thing to write home about was our meal at Les Petits Siamois. After reading wonderful reviews, we walked over to the restaurant on our first night in Lyon. We were turned away because they had had a very busy night and they ran out of food. We agreed: we're going back, and we did, the very next night.
Above you see our first course: a delicious chicken filling combined peanuts, ginger, coconut and fresh cilantro, which we wrapped into bundles with bright, Thai leaves.
As we savored our meal the owner/waiter spent time with us at our table as he made his rounds back and fourth from the patio to the kitchen; he was such a lovely man that we felt fortunate to be on his flight path. He shared our enthusiasm for the food, and had a wonderful time exchanging stories about food, and the places we've called home. He told us how each day, the food was prepped fresh for that evening, and he spoke about the care he put into the ingredients for each dish.
Today we did a rigorous hike up to a neighborhood in the north where we heard Lyon hosts a weekly farmer's market. As we browsed the produce and meats I began feeling very inspired to cook in Paris where we will have a kitchen in our one-bedroom apartment.
On our way down the hill we were ready for lunch, when suddenly I took in a delicious waft of something fantastique. We turned the corner and I read the sign: YAAFA "you are a falafel addict."
We knew exactly where we were having lunch, and YAAFA did not disappoint. The falafel balls were perfectly crisp, and well seasoned. The whole way through we raved about the food, and even hours later we were still complimeting it...a sign of a good lunch. Ariel said, "If we let our noses decide our restaurants every time, we'll never go wrong." I think he's onto something.
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