James G.
Yelp
When it's the last day of a fantastic two-week visit to France, and you're in Lyon, the country's culinary capital, and you fancy yourself a bit of a connoisseur who doesn't want to be disappointed, you have a real challenge on your hands when it comes to choosing a restaurant. Add to that the fact that it's Monday, when so many places seem to be closed, and your challenge is even greater.
Fortunately for us, a reliable friend suggested (nay, insisted) that we visit this bouchon for our last dinner in France, and not wanting to upset him, and trusting his opinion implicitly, we phoned them up and got ourselves a table. When we arrived we were struck by several things--the small size of the establishment; the youth of the several young women who run the place; the limited menu; the low prices of the wines. We were also struck by how empty it was, since we were the first to arrive for dinner, just as they opened at 7pm. But before even ten minutes were up, the place was half-full, and before long, it was packed, and many people were turned away at the door who hadn't had the presence of mind to book in advance.
As mentioned above the menu is small. In addition, they only do a "formule", comprising a salad course (which has no choices to be made) followed by a main, cheese and dessert, all for €27. As we sat down we were given a little amuse bouche, which I have to say was the one disappointment of the meal, being too dry and hard to swallow and not having much taste, but it was the one misstep of the evening.
The salad course consisted of three dishes--a delightfully mustardy lentil salad; herring with tzatziki; and a cold terrine of eggplant with a tomato sauce on the side. When they were delivered to us, the server explained what they were so incredibly quickly that I could not follow it at all--it was only when we heard her explain it to a neighbouring table, and in English, that I picked up some of it (she spoke quickly in English, too), but I asked her again what it was and she patiently explained it again.
For our mains, there were several choices to choose from and we chose the onglet with new potatoes for one of us, and the boudin with apples and herb salad. The onglet was cooked perfectly and had exquisite flavour, as did the potatoes accompanying it. But the boudin was something else--delicious black pudding in a filo pastry with apples and topped with a salad with parsley and other herbs. It was a great way to make a rather humble item--black pudding--into something elevated, and I enjoyed it immensely.
Dessert was perhaps a bit less outstanding than the rest of the meal, though that's not to say that it was not good. But the choices were not as interesting to us (we have grown a bit tired of molten chocolate cake and sorbet) so we stuck to two items that were a bit different--lime cheesecake on the one hand, and "dessert à la praline" on the other. The former was fairly straightforward, with a bit of chestnut cream on top for good measure, while the latter was (to me) more interesting, a kind of semifreddo with red fruits and with praline mixed in, served with red fruit coulis.
To go with our meal, we ordered a 'pot' of Crozes-Hermitage wine, which seemed a good buy at €14.50 and went very well with what we had ordered.
This was an exceptional and exceptionally enjoyable evening in all respects, and the young ladies of the establishment have lived up to their reputation, as did the friend who recommended it to us.