Truly scary amounts of food!!! The Lyonnais Bouchon Experience

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NOW I know “bouchon” is French for BLOCKAGE!!!

Sheesh. Technically, it can mean either “cork” or “traffic jam”. You get the idea. It is ALSO the name of a traditional Lyonnais restaurant, where huge amounts of pork products are served. Along with huge amounts of pretty much everything else they can possibly cram into a customer, it turns out!

Our volunteer guide this morning, the charming Anne, recommended a really good one only steps from our apartment and we thought we would give it a shot as we wandered homeward after the tour since we would walk right by it anyway.

The place was empty except for a family party of four. The waiter seated us efficiently at the very far back, at a table for two on a small landing right next to the kitchen. I noted to Susan that we seemed destined to be given the worst spot in the room. Wrong again! Turned out to be the best seat in the house. From there we could watch that same young man serve the entire restauarant – main floor (about 50 seats), landing (eight seats) and a downstairs (30? 35?) all by himself. INCLUDING handling all drink orders, seating customers, and working the till. A hell of a show!

And the food? Oh, my God. HUGE quantities of really good stuff at one fixed price. 27 euros. Main course selections are on a chalk board. Includes salad of your choice, bread, cheese and dessert. And I checked. They do the exact same thing at lunch and dinner six days a week.

Except that the SALAD was a complete salad course. And not just any old salad, either, no sirree. Huge porcelain bowls (three litre, maybe) get plonked on your table, on adjoining tables, stacked on top of each other. SEVEN of them. Big spoons stuck in each, help yourself, take as much as you want.

I could not reach my camera because by the time they came, the place was so packed that there was no way to get through the crowd to the jacket where I had left it. Groups of 6, 4, 6, were shown to tables by our poor waiter, running back and forth to get everyone seated.

AND, he is lugging these huge salad bowls all over the place. (Turns out he is a one person travelling salad bar. And, later, a one person travelling dessert wagon. Among his other duties)

Salad? Did I say “salad?” Abolish all thoughts of North American diet food. These were Lyonnais “composed” salads: cold vegetables, fish, and meats, cut up and dressed with variations on oil and vinegar. Trout gravlax, cold cubes of tripe (actually, not bad. Think vinegar infused bubble gum), thin pink slices of cervelas sausage, chunks of salted(?) beef, potato salad, pickled beets, lentils In sour cream. Oh, yeah, BEFORE that, you also got a little plate with big chunks of what was probably head cheese (really, really good, to my surprise), and some thin slices of dried beef. With bread, of course.

Susan had the chicken fricassee with Marcellin cheese – with a big dish of Lyonnais potatoes on the side. I decided to go for broke and had the breaded pig’s foot with Bearnaise sauce.

Frankly, mine should have been revolting. Pig’s feet, I discover, are about 70 percent bone, and about 25 percent gristle. Except that whatever the cooking method used, it turned the gristle into a something quite good which combined being meltingly tender while at the same time al dente. Sounds weird, don’t it? Not nearly as weird as eating it!! And with Bearnaise sauce served in a big sauce boat that probably held about a pint of the stuff. Help yourself, Monsieur! But save room for cheese and dessert!

Both dishes were good. Mine all the more remarkably so because it ought to have, by rights, been disgusting and was not! We didn’t even try to finish it all. Cheese was on its way. And dessert.

Oh, wait. That should read “cheeseS.” And “dessertS.” Two cheeses: a cream cheese with subtly pickled chives and a half a Marcellin cheese (about four ounces). And MORE bread.

Then the dessert course. A little disappointing, this one. Only FIVE giant bowls got stacked up on our table. I had to eat left handed to avoid reaching over the ruddy things. Pears poached in red wine. A giant flan. Prunes marinated in sugar syrup. Fromage blanc with honey. And, to Susan’s delight, rice pudding. Yes, I tried them all.

This whole performance took slightly over two hours. Nobody complained. How could you? I’ve never seen a server work as hard as that young man did, or move as fast. He got some help from a couple of the kitchen staff about 90 minutes in, but he was the rest of the show. All you could do was watch him and raise your eyebrows at the folks at the next table who had been there almost as long. It created a kind of community, in a strange sort of a way. As we finally finished, the rather solid French foursome at the table behind Susan, laughed as I thanked the waiter for our “small” meal. The one fella told me carefully and slowly that this sort of meal was “typique” – typical. He also said that the next night his son, a pharmacist, was buying them all dinner at a three star Michelin restaurant to celebrate his 50th birthday. A little different, yes? I laughed and told them of our one-star experience with lots of “petit plats” – small plates, like this – and I held up my hands to indicate a small portion. That, I admitted, was not me. Then I waved at the huge bowls of dessert still balanced on our table like acrobats building a pyramid. This, I said, THIS is me!

They laughed at that, too. Then we went out into the sunshine, not feeling trapped, as I would expect after two hours plus sitting in one spot, but rested and ready to go again.

As long as I don’t have to eat again for a year!

Except that, God help us, we have reservations at L’Eau Salee tonight. See, I made them before lunch as we went by with our guide. Fool that I am, I was worried that we would have trouble getting into a restaurant on the Saturday night of a long weekend. Now I am worried that I will have to explain our lack of appetites!

Wish me luck!

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