Andrew Kay enjoys a gastronomique blow out in Lyon at Les Halles Paul Bocuse & Le Meunière

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Day two of the Lyon International Chef Exchange trip started at Grand Hotel Des Terreaux where I picked at the edges of a delightful breakfast having so overindulged the day before. It’s a very nice hotel, full of charm and very comfortable, especially the bed which I so needed.

By 10am though we were at Les Halles de Lyon, a foodie heaven much lauded and used by top chef Paul Bocuse. There I met the amazing Madame Colette Sibilia, the eponymous lady behind one of the most visited stalls in this vast emporium of culinary delights.

We started nibbling saucisson from the word gourmand, by 11am we were eating plump oysters and prawns washed down by premier Cru Chablis, I know, that really is just showing off. The market, now named after Bocuse, is sensational, and if I had a bigger bag I would have no doubt bankrupted myself. Thank heavens for easyJet’s baggage policy!

None of us wanted to leave but we were due at Jean Louis Gelin’s La Meuniere at twelve for lunch. Now Jean Louis is quite a character, and one with a moustache that puts my own to shame. But it’s not about face fur, it’s about his bill of fare, and what an array it is.

What follows is not for the faint hearted but go with me on this. As a Lancashire lad I have been fed my fair share of offal over the years, and the fare at his Bouchon has plenty to offer. We started by drinking chilled beaujolais with cassis, a drink he calls a communard and it did have a good restorative effect. Then out came the starters, after big bowls of crisp pork skin. I am no dainty mouth and in my role as an ambassador for the food festival it usually falls on me to taste the lot as my colleagues are one a veggie and two wavering on the brink of giving up meat. So it was once again down to me to tuck in. Whilst they made light work of a puy lentil salad and a delicious bowl of remoulade I worked my way through a tripe salad, a sausage salad, a bowl of gelatinous calves heel and finally a salad of pig’s snout. Yes, you did read that right, it was awfully offally and hefty stuff. I admit that the tripe did not do it for me but I actually loved the rest, especially the sweet pig snout.

For my main course I chose rognons de veau, calves kidney in a simple mustard and cream sauce – and that I loved too, although it was a huge portion and it came alone on a big plate. How I wanted just a few potatoes with it but none came.

Around the table my veggie accomplice was served a creamy macaroni dish and the hoverer tucked into quenelles of pike in a seafood sauce. I looked at them with envy as they certainly looked the lighter choice but later I was assured that they were not light in any sense but deliciously rich.

Jean Luis served wine from his own vineyard, a Gamay, and we loved that too. When he came back to offer dessert I was fit to explode, but with a little teasing we were all lured into a glass of cassis sorbet with a shot of cassis on top and he brought out some of the Lyon speciality, a scarlet praline tart that takes sweetness to a level I had previously never reached. A strong black coffee was required to peel me off the ceiling of this small corner of a France gone by. The restaurant has not been tampered with since around 1964 and is frozen in time, a gem that is more than worth the round trip to this most exciting of culinary destinations.

Our next International Chef Exchange is with Rotterdam this autumn so it’s back to the Netherlands for me. Most excitingly we are now negotiating a ICEx to Toronto next summer with two chefs from here trading places with two from that great Canadian city.

I doubt I will be presented with quite so many plates of innards in either place but I’m proud that I went almost the whole way in Lyon, I apologise, I have tried andouilette once and will never do that again.

Le Meunière, 11 Rue Neuve, 69001 Lyon, France Tel: +33 4 78 28 62 91
Grand Hotel Des Terreaux, 16, Rue Lanterne, 69001 Lyon, France,
Tel: +33 (0) 4 78 27 04 10 www.grand-hotel-des-terreaux.fr

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