Episode 14
33 minutes
Lyon is often called the gastronomic capital of France. After 23 years of living in France, I had never been, so I went to find out whether it lives up to its reputation, and I started with an afternoon food tour through the Old Town and the Presqu’île.
In this episode I talk through each stop on the tour: pink praline syrup at Sirop de la Rue, rosette and jésus sec in a cellar, the story of how Lyon’s silk workers lost a glass of wine a day to their bosses, a cheese debate over Fourme d’Ambert, Comté and Saint-Marcellin, a walk through the traboules, and praline brioche to finish. I also look at what food tours cost, who they suit best, and why comparing the price with a restaurant meal misses the point.
If you are wondering whether a food tour is worth adding to your next city break, this episode is for you.
Disclosure: the three-hour afternoon tour was provided free of charge by Lyon Food Tour. There was no promise of coverage or of a positive review, and all opinions are my own.
Featured in this episode
- Lyon Food Tour: [add link], three-hour afternoon tour €70, four-hour tour €80 at the time of recording
- Sirop de la Rue: praline syrup, wine and charcuterie, Vieux Lyon
- Rosette and jésus sec: Lyon’s traditional dry sausages
- Fourme d’Ambert: a mild blue cow’s milk cheese from the Auvergne
- Comté: a hard cow’s milk cheese from the Jura
- Saint-Marcellin: a small, soft cow’s milk cheese from the area around Lyon
- Praline rose and praline brioche
- The traboules of Vieux Lyon
Transcript of The European Compass : A Food & Travel Podcast : Episode 14
Welcome to The European Compass Podcast, the podcast where we explore the heart of Europe through its food, its markets and the stories behind every dish. I’m your host, Julia Doust, and if you’ve ever planned a trip around a meal, then you’re in the right place.
Why Lyon?
Right, today we are going to talk about Lyon. Lyon in France. I was in Lyon last week. Lyon is classed as the gastronomic capital of France, which of course is the gastronomic capital of the world.
Now, even though I’ve lived in France for 23 years now, I’ve never been to Lyon. It’s the direct opposite side of the country to where I live, and I don’t know anybody there, and I’ve never had reason to go. It’s not been on the way to anywhere that I’ve been going, and I haven’t made the time to go. So I thought it was time that I corrected that, and go and find out whether it truly is the gastronomic centre that everybody talks about, and to see what there was to see.
Why I Do Food Tours
Part of that was that I decided to do a food tour. It’s something I’ve started doing when I go to visit cities, to try and get an idea as to what the local specialities are, and also get the viewpoint of someone else. It’s a good way of being able to talk to someone else about the food in the area, because you get a guide, and that guide needs to know a decent amount about the local food in order to be able to do their job. So it gives me opportunities to talk to people and discuss the local food, what’s good, what isn’t good, where to eat, things like that. So I thought it’s a really good way to start my stay in Lyon.
Full Disclosure
Now, full disclosure, I wrote to the company that runs this food tour, it’s called Lyon Food Tour, and I told them what I was doing, and they gave me the tour for free. So that’s the full disclosure, I didn’t pay for this tour. I got it for free because I’m doing this podcast, but I didn’t promise to do the podcast, and I didn’t promise to give a good review. So that’s just upfront, to be honest with you.
I’m just going to let you know what I thought about it, and whether I think food tours in general are something that’s worth doing. When you’re travelling, should you do a food tour? Is it worth it, and in particular somewhere like Lyon? And is it worth the money as well?
What Food Tours Cost
That’s the other point, because food tours in general aren’t cheap. It’s not the cheapest way to do a tour. You can get a walking tour for sort of €20, type thing. Sometimes they’re even classed as being free, and then you tip the tour guide 15, 20 euros. So that’s the sort of level.
Now, the food tours I’ve been on tend to start more around €45 to €50, and go up to more like 100, so they’re in that sort of bracket, 50 to 100. It depends on whether you’re on an afternoon tour or an evening tour. The evening tours are generally more expensive, I think partly because more alcohol’s included, and also because the tour guide needs to be paid a bit more for working in the evening. So that’s the sort of price range that we’re looking at.
I was originally going to go on an evening food tour in Lyon that was, I think, 90 euros, and actually there weren’t enough people on that tour, so obviously they’re not going to run the tour just for me, and so I got moved on to the afternoon tour, which I think is a little bit cheaper. Certainly the evening tour’s like a four-hour tour, and the afternoon tour’s a three-hour tour. So I will check up, and I’ll put in the notes how much the tour actually costs.
More Than Food: History and the Two Rivers
Lyon Food Tour, the company, do several tours, and this particular one was an afternoon tour starting in the Old Town, so we met up in the Old Town.
I think what’s interesting about the tours, and I’ve seen this elsewhere, but this was particularly marked in the Lyon one, was that you don’t just talk about food. Part of these food tours is to get behind the actual culture of a place, and it’s very difficult to do that without talking about the history, the geography and things like that. The society in general of a city or an area is needed in order to be able to understand the food.
So before we even got into eating, there was some discussion about a little bit of history about Lyon, and how it came to be with the Romans. I’m not going to go into that here. I’m doing a video on Lyon, and I might go into more details about the history on the video, but we did talk on the food tour about how the Romans came in and started on the hill, and then it came back down towards the rivers.
So Lyon is on two separate rivers. It’s on the Rhône and the Saône, and they are actually very important in terms of not just the geography of the city, but also the food culture, because the rivers are bringing in ingredients. It means that the soil is fertile, so the type of food that you can get there obviously is dependent on that.
The Old Town and the Presqu’île
In Lyon, these two rivers come in and they split the town essentially in three, not in two. If you have a river running through a city, normally it splits the city in two, either side of the river. Because you have two rivers that then join eventually, you end up with the outside banks of the rivers, and then in the middle there’s what’s called the Presqu’île, which means the nearly island, which is the bit where the two rivers are running and then they meet together, so one end of it is like an island. So you end up with these three different bits of Lyon.
The one side, which is the west side of the Saône River, is at the foot of the hill where now there is a basilica, but originally that’s where the Romans started their settlement. At the foot of that hill is what’s called the Old Town, and that’s where a lot of the older buildings are. It’s all been pedestrianised, and it is quite touristy there as well, because there’s a cathedral there, and there’s a lot of little shops. A lot of the food culture of Lyon was started in that section, and a lot of the places that are catering to tourists are around this section.
A Note on Authenticity
I think one thing is important to say, and this is true, I think, of all food tours. Fundamentally they are a business, and they are going to be touristy. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. At the end of the day, people who live in these cities don’t go on food tours, so it’s bound to be a touristy experience. You’re never going to get an authentic local experience on a food tour, because authentic locals don’t go on food tours. They go to their favourite restaurants with their friends and sit down and eat a meal. This isn’t meant to be an authentic experience. It’s meant to help you discover some of the authentic food that is available.
Sirop de la Rue and Lyon’s Pink Pralines
We’re in this Old Town, and we go into this little shop, which is called, I did note this down, Sirop de la Rue, or syrup of the street. It’s this little tiny old shop, and it’s full of bottles of wine, and it’s got lots of dried sausages and things like that, really traditional sort of food, and it’s also got this syrup.
Sirop is what in English would be called a cordial. I’m not quite sure what you’d call it in America, maybe I need to check on that. So something you mix into water, but you might also mix it in a cocktail or something like that.
This particular shop originally started doing lots of different flavours of this syrup, and then they decided to specialise in a praline syrup. So praline is the sugared almonds, the almonds that are almost confit in a sugar syrup, that are quite traditional across Europe, and in Lyon they had this speciality of making them pink. There’s no particular reason for it, other than the fact that it made them look nicer, because brown is not the nicest of colours, and pink is nicer. So back in the 19th century someone decided to make his pralines stand out a little bit by colouring them pink, and it worked, and so forevermore the pralines in Lyon are pink. I’m not convinced it actually changes the flavour. In fact, I don’t think there is any flavour to do with it, it’s just a colouring.
This shop had such a success with its praline syrup that that’s what they specialised in, and that’s why the name of the shop is that. And the first thing we had was actually a red wine mixed in with this syrup. That was very nice, a little bit sweet. Some people find it a little bit sweet.
This was in the afternoon, I think probably about 3:30 in the afternoon, so if you’re someone who’s not really into drinking in the afternoon, you might want to rethink this particular food tour. Not all food tours I’ve been on have been alcohol based, but on this particular food tour there are options, you can get water or something as well. But obviously the wine is part of the experience, and it’s also part of the cost, so that’s what you’re paying for.
Charcuterie in the Cellar
So we had this wine mixed with this syrup upstairs, and the son of the owner of the shop came and talked to us about what the shop did, and then he gave some explanation about some of the charcuteries in the region, how they were made and what the differences were. And then we went downstairs to their cellar, where they had a table set up, and we all sat around, and some more wine came out, and there were plates of charcuterie and some cheese.
The classic charcuterie in Lyon is something called a rosette, which is kind of like a big salami. It’s very nice, and it’s pretty standard, in that you get industrial versions of it at the supermarkets. Even on my side of France, which is nowhere near Lyon, it’s a standard product in the supermarket.
And they then do some other types of charcuterie. They do one that’s called Jesus, and it wasn’t just this shop, because I saw them elsewhere. In French it’s jésus sec, so it’s Dry Jesus, which seems a bit of an odd name for a sausage. It’s a pork sausage that’s in the sort of shape of a big pear or quince, and it’s a standard sort of pork sausage, and then it’s got a bit of nutmeg and mace and things like that in to flavour it. That’s very nice, and they make theirs.
And then we had some ham with truffles, because it’s not far from the sort of truffle region in Lyon. We had a little bit of goat’s cheese with some fig inside. I think that’s probably because of the season, this is October, so fig season, so that’s a nice seasonal sort of touch.
The Lyon Pot and the Silk Workers
And then quite a generous amount of red wine. The red wine kept coming, every time the bottle emptied it kept coming. They told us a really interesting story, actually, in terms of red wine. They were serving the red wine in a bottle-shaped carafe that they were refilling, and he said normally these carafes are 500 millilitres. A bottle of wine is 750 millilitres, and a carafe is usually 500 millilitres, and these particular carafes have got quite a big section at the bottom, which is clear glass. They were saying that actually in Lyon they don’t serve their bottles as 500 millilitres, they serve them at 460 millilitres, essentially a pint.
They were explaining about the history, and this is where the history of a town all links into its gastronomy. Lyon was a silk town, so a lot of the workers in Lyon were silk workers, something like 30 or 40,000 people used to work as silk workers in Lyon. They were paid three or four times a year for their work, when the silk work was sold, but then they were paid on a daily basis with wine. They had a bottle at breakfast, a bottle at lunch and a bottle at dinner.
At one point the bosses decided that they could actually save a little bit of money by giving people slightly smaller bottles, and rather than making the actual bottle slightly smaller, they made the base of the bottle thicker, so there was less wine inside the bottle. Skimming this 40 millilitres from each bottle was the equivalent of a glass of wine a day. So it’s like the boss was taking a glass of wine a day from the workers, and so they call it the bottom of the boss, so the bottom of the wine belongs to the boss. And this is why the wine in Lyon is not served in the same volume as it is elsewhere in France.
Sharing a Table
So they were serving this wine, and every time it emptied they just refilled it, and we were all sitting around this table. This is the point where you start discussing with the other people on the food tour, and I think this is where food tours are different from maybe a walking tour or history tour. Normally when you’re on a walking tour you follow the guide around, you listen to the history, and there isn’t a lot of interaction between the other people on the tour. I mean, a little bit, but not as much. Whereas on a food tour, because you end up sitting around a table with other people, you obviously start talking to them, and you’re in a smaller group. We were actually only six.
So you start talking to the other people on the tour, and then that starts the conversation going, and the conversation is still staying around food in general and the food in Lyon, and we’re talking with the guide as well, as we’re asking questions and discussing things.
On my tour we had a couple that were from America, from Philadelphia. We had one lady that was from northern Spain. We had me, British stroke French, and then we had a couple that were from Bulgaria. So a really, really good mix, which meant that you’re then comparing different food cultures at the same time as eating this food from Lyon.
Pork Scratchings and a Sachet of Salt
You’re then having this discussion about whether they make sausages like this in Bulgaria. One of the things they had was what I would call pork scratchings, the kind of fatty bit of the meat that’s then deep fried into a crunchy bit. We tasted those, and the lady from Bulgaria said no, these should have more salt in them, they’re not salty enough, and the French were saying no, no, they’re always served like this.
And I actually agree with the lady from Bulgaria that they lacked the salt. In England, when you’re serving pork scratchings, the point is for them to be salty, to get people to drink, but that’s not why they’re there. In France they’re there as a crunch, so you don’t need the salt, and there’s enough salt elsewhere.
The best part about this was that the Bulgarian husband actually then reached into his bag and pulled out a little sachet of salt that he had from some place or other, sprinkled a bit of salt on these crunchy pork things, and she was then very happy, because then she had her salt on her crunchy pork thing. It was a really nice way to start the discussion and start a bit of camaraderie between the group.
And the food was very good as well. It was nice that it was somewhere where they make some of it. One of the things was a kind of meat paste spread that he was putting on some bread, and he was asking people to guess what was in it, and even the tour guide hadn’t had this particular thing before. It was made on site, and the idea was to taste it and try and see what was in it. And again the lady from Bulgaria said yes, actually we make something very similar to this. It’s the pork with the fat, and it used to be quite valuable, because the pork fat has got calories in it, and calories were a value because it meant you could load up on calories. That’s what we needed in those days. So it was another part of this sort of discussion around what was going on.
Cheese on the Presqu’île
So we then went from there, and we walked for a little bit, and then we went over a bridge over the river onto the Presqu’île. So we’re now on this island bit in the middle, and we went to a cheese shop, and at the cheese shop we had several different types of cheese and a glass of local white wine.
And then we ended up launching into a discussion of cheese, obviously, and what the differences were, and whether America had proper cheese or not, and how many cheeses are there in France. We had quite a debate about the number of cheeses, because there’s an official number of cheeses in France, which the guide had got a spreadsheet with the numbers on, and I think it’s something like three and a half thousand official cheeses. But I made the point that that’s a type of cheese with a recipe and a name, but each village has got a different farmer making a cheese that might have the same name but will taste totally different from the next village, and that in spring and autumn these cheeses taste different, because the pasture’s different.
And so we had a whole debate about cheese. Paying money to go on a tour to end up discussing cheese with people, I think, was such a great way of passing an afternoon.
Fourme d’Ambert
So the different cheeses we had there. One of them was a blue cheese called a Fourme d’Ambert, so fourme as in the shape, and Ambert is the name of a village.
I’m not a blue cheese fan, so if Roquefort is on a cheeseboard, I’ll just leave it on the side, and he said, “You’re going to try this because it is different,” and I did try it, and he was right. I didn’t love it, but it is much milder than a Roquefort. The reason being, Fourme d’Ambert is a cow’s milk cheese, not a sheep’s milk cheese. Roquefort is sheep’s milk. And it’s not matured for anywhere near as long as a Roquefort, it’s only matured for, I think it’s 28 days, and so the flavour isn’t as strong as a Roquefort. That was nice. It’s very nice.
Comté
The other cheese, they had a Comté on the board. The guide was saying this is the most famous of all French cheeses, and I’m actually doubting that. I think in France it’s the cheese that most French like and have in their fridge and would have on a cheese board. I’m not convinced it’s the most famous cheese from France. I think that would have to go to something like a Camembert or a Brie, but they’re from the north of France, and so he, from Lyon, isn’t necessarily going to think this. It’s just an example of how someone who’s living in a place doesn’t necessarily know what outsiders would think about the place.
But anyway, Comté is a hard cow’s milk cheese, matured for quite a long time. I think you can get 12 months, but that would be very young. The standard is 15 or 18 months. You can get two years, you can get three years, I’ve even seen four years in terms of maturity. It’s a little like a cheddar in that it’s a hard cheese. It’s got a more flowery flavour than a cheddar and a slightly harder sort of texture. It’s a lovely cheese. Comté is lovely. If you ever see Comté, get Comté. It’s a fantastic cheese.
Saint-Marcellin
And they then had another cheese, which I hadn’t tasted before, called Saint-Marcellin. Again this is local to Lyon. It’s not from Lyon itself, but from that area. Saint-Marcellin are little cheeses, in the same way you get these little sort of palets of goat’s cheese, but it’s not a goat’s cheese, it’s a cow’s cheese. These palets are about 80 grams, so that’s of the order of three ounces, with a little bit of crust.
It’s quite a fresh cheese. Again, this isn’t a cheese that’s been matured for a long time, and it had almost the texture of a goat’s cheese. It’s not quite as white as a goat’s cheese, it’s just got that slight yellow tinge to it that makes you think, OK, it’s not a goat, because a goat’s cheese would always be white. It’s not runny like a Brie or a Camembert, but it is soft, and you could sort of spread it. Really, really nice, and nice enough that I came home and then bought some more so that I can have it in our fridge as well.
It is something that is available across France, but less common than it would be in the Lyon area. In the Lyon area they use it a lot for cooking as well. I saw quite a few restaurants with various gratins with Saint-Marcellin in, so it’s a very common cheese for cooking. Really nice.
Walking the Traboules
So, cheeseboard, lots of discussion. So far we’ve eaten charcuterie and cheese, and then some cheese. From there we go back over the river into the Old Town, have a little bit more of a walk around, and down some of what’s called traboules.
The traboules are little corridors, access ways through buildings, that Old Lyon is famous for, and it’s one of the things that they take you on. I did a walking tour of the Old Town separately to this food tour, and that’s one of the bases of the walking tour, to take you down these traboules. They’re very famous in Lyon. It’s one of the things they push as the thing about Lyon that’s different, that you don’t find elsewhere.
They’re basically where you’ve got two streets running parallel to each other, and there’s then a corridor that runs from one street to the other street, with a door on it, so from the outside you just think it’s the door into the building, but they are access ways. I think there’s 500 or something traboules in Old Lyon, but there’s a certain number, something like 37, that are open to the public. They’re not open to the public all the time. They have opening and closing times. Generally by six in the evening they’re closed, because people live in these buildings. So when you walk through the corridors, you’re actually walking through their apartment building, if you like.
These are very, very old structures, several hundred years old, and the corridors sort of take you through and then generally open up into a sort of courtyard in the middle, and then back through a corridor to the other side of the street. The walking tour took us through several of these, and the food tour did as well, because I think in Old Lyon people would be upset if you didn’t go through a traboule. It’s what Old Lyon is known for.
Praline Brioche and Ice Cream
And then we ended up eating at a cafe that was at the end of a traboule, so part of this corridor was in a cafe, in this old building, and again we went downstairs. There’s a lot of cellars in Lyon. People use the maximum amount of space, and so in Old Lyon they’ve all got cellars.
And there we had the speciality, which is a brioche with praline, which I’d heard about and really wanted to try, so I was very pleased that they had this on the tour, because I’d heard this is amazing, this is like the best brioche. The Vendée, where I live, is known for its brioche, so I really wanted to try it. In the Vendée we don’t put praline into the brioche, so I wanted to taste this brioche with the praline in to see whether that was an improvement, see if it was worth doing, and it was very nice. This particular cafe made their own, and it was a very nice brioche.
And then we had another little dessert with the praline rose in, and again some more discussion about the traboules and the pralines and about how important this is to Lyon.
And then we finished the tour in an ice cream shop, with very nice ice cream, in a lovely Italianesque sort of courtyard. There’s quite a lot of Italian influences. Lyon’s not far from Italy, and the Italians came over to Lyon for work, and they brought a lot of their influence with them. So there’s a lot of the architecture there that is influenced by Italy, and it’s beautiful colours.
Is a Food Tour Worth the Money?
So that was what we ate on the food tour. They say it replaces a meal, and they’re right, in the fact that I didn’t eat my evening meal. I’d had breakfast at the hotel, didn’t have lunch, because I was having this food tour at 3:00, and then couldn’t eat anything in the evening, because I had had enough to eat. So in that respect, yes, it does replace a meal. But you’re not having a meal as in starter, main course, dessert, with some meat and some vegetables and things like that. It’s cheese and charcuterie and some dessert, so it’s not a gastronomic meal in that respect.
What you are getting is a lot of discussion about the food. You’re getting a lot of information about the food, a lot of history about the food, and an opportunity to talk to someone that knows about the food there, and that’s what you’re paying for on these food tours, and that’s the experience.
So when you’re looking at whether it is worth it, don’t compare the price of a food tour with the price of a meal in a restaurant, because you’re not comparing like with like. So yes, you’re not getting that value’s worth of food, because what you’re actually paying for is a tour with a guide who’s knowledgeable, who’s going to talk about the food, and the food comes with it. But that’s not everything that you’re getting, and I think that’s really an important point to note about food tours, and that’s why I do think they’re worth it, and I will continue to go on them.
I think especially these days, people are looking for connection. They’re looking for something real that’s not from AI, that’s not on a screen, and this is a real experience, because you’re talking to real people. You’re going into these shops, particularly the first shop, where it was the owner’s son that was talking to us about how they made these things, and that shop had been in the family for quite a number of generations. So you are getting this access that you wouldn’t normally get, and that’s really precious. And the fact that it’s set up for tourists means that they all speak English. Some of it’s fairly heavily accented, but it is understandable.
Food Tours for Solo Travellers
It gives you that possibility, and not only that, but the possibility to talk to other tourists. As a solo female traveller, this is perfect, because going out in an evening to sit in a restaurant is slightly awkward. It’s not very comfortable to go into a restaurant, but going on a food tour like this is absolutely fine. The lady from Spain was travelling solo as well, and it gives you this opportunity, as a solo traveller, to interact with other travellers without feeling in any way awkward about being on your own. So it is something I think is particularly good for solo travellers, but not only.
I think what it wouldn’t work as well for is if you were in a big group. If you’re travelling with a group of six or eight of you, and you went on a food tour like that, there might be one other couple with your group, and it’s going to kind of change that balance, because so much of it is about the interaction between you and your different cultures, talking about all these different foods from different places. So I think if you went in a big group, that would probably change your viewpoint of it and might mean that you didn’t get the best experience.
Coming Up Next
I am going to stop there. I do want to talk more about food in Lyon, because there was loads to talk about. There’s loads to do. I ate in a bouchon. I ate some really nice food in a very nice restaurant. I went to the market, and so there is quite a lot to talk about.
There’s someone that has said that they will come on the podcast, and she lives in Lyon, so I’m rather hoping that she’ll come on, and then we can discuss the food in Lyon together, so I don’t want to do too much of that here. There’s going to be a video coming up on YouTube about what I did in Lyon and where I went, and I will also put a review on the hotels I stayed in, so look out for those. The next episode will be something about Lyon, but maybe with a guest, hopefully. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Thanks for joining me on The European Compass Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, then share it with a fellow food traveller, and don’t forget to subscribe for more delicious adventures. Until next time, bon appétit and happy travels.
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