Yep, we just returned home from a glorious weekend trip to central France! Check out Melanie's awesome fish course from Friday night:
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| Fillet of red mullet with crispy potato scales and cream sauce. |
More on our delicious meal at one of the top restaurants in France a bit later...
We have been wanting to visit a quaint French village since Melanie and I moved to this country almost ten months ago, so Friday morning we piled into an Uber car and headed off to Paris's Gare de Lyon railway station, which you may remember from my Italy for the Weekend post. After several weeks of research we had settled on the medieval village of Pérouges, which is only about 30 minutes from another place we've been wanting to visit, so we decided to spend our first night in Lyon, and head over to Pérouges on Saturday.
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| Lyon is the third largest city in France, and one of the gastronomic capitals of the world! |
Although we couldn't stand him at first, Melanie and I have become big fans of chef/author/TV personality: Anthony Bourdain. His shows about France were really inspirational during the arduous process of selling our house, and trashing or donating 95% of our earthly belongings; and we particularly enjoyed the episode he did in Lyon. It taught us all about perhaps the most famous chef in the history of France, Paul Bocuse.
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| In 2011 Paul Bocuse was named "Chef of the Century" by the Culinary Institute of America! |
As it so happens, Paul Bocuse's 3 Michelin star restaurant is in Lyon, and we knew this was an extravagance we we just couldn't pass up. We checked into our hotel, had a very light lunch, and then Ubered it over to the restaurant.
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| The L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges has had 3 Michelin stars for over 50 years, longer than any other restaurant. |
We had reservations at 8:00 but we arrived a bit early. This was no problem and the staff lead us to our seats straight away.
To be honest, the outside of the restaurant is a bit gaudy. (Orange and green? Really?) But inside it's very elegant, and was everything we expected.
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| The walls of the restaurant are adorned with old pictures of Bocuse and other famous chefs. |
Naturally, we had already looked at the menu online and debated about what to order for more hours than I'm comfortable admitting. I'll take you through our courses:
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| It wasn't on the menu, but this creamy tomato soup starter was incredible. |
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| Duck foie gras with passion fruit sauce and crispy potato. Tremendous! |
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| Filet of sole with noodles à la Fernand Point. This may look simple but the caramelized cream sauce was sublime! |
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| Our complementary palate cleanser: a delightful "Winemaker's Sherbet". |
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| Filet de Boeuf Rossini, sauce Périgueux. (Perfect steak, foie gras, truffle sauce, potatoes... maybe the best thing ever.) |
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| This was the pre-dessert dessert: creme chocolat et griottet (thick chocolate cream with a morello cherry). Addictive! |
To be bluntly honest, we should have stopped after the pre-dessert and our meals would have been perfect. But they had three *tables* full of all-you-can-eat cakes and other sweet goodies for a pretty reasonable price. We couldn't pass that up... even though we should have. Don't get me wrong, the desserts were not bad, they were just sort of... average. We were already quite full and the sweet stuff really pushed us over the top. We left the restaurant feeling decidedly... blech.
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| I got 3 desserts: baba au rhum cake, île flottante, and spiced Beaujolais with fresh fruit. (The latter was very good.) |
This meal was definitely a splurge, but we're really glad we did it. Everything we ordered was either really good or outstanding (with the exception of the desserts). The whole meal took nearly three hours and it was great to see everyone around us having such a good time. For example, when they brought in the dessert tables for the first couple, everyone immediately took out their cameras to take pictures. The elegantly dressed man at the table looked at all the food and muttered, "We're not getting out of here alive!"
We took a cab back to our hotel and somehow managed to roll ourselves into bed. We slept like logs and woke up still feeling full, but pretty good, all things considered. We checked out of the hotel and caught an Uber to the train station.
Next stop: Pérouges!
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