LYON & THE LEGENDARY PAUL BOCUSE

October 8, my birthday, and I’m riding the sleek TGV train from Paris to Lyon. An hour into the trip and my view of suburban Paris has given way to a horizontally rolling scene of green pastures, bordered by hedges, scattered with the creamiest coloured cows I’ve ever seen. Cloudy fog wisps through the green trees, and past the church steeples, predictably surrounded by a tiny village of houses, which periodically appear in my moving picture window.

As the clouds darken and weather turns eery, the different shades of green landscape become more clear. The interior of my carriage, number 11, starts to feel more like a gentelmens club than a train, with its dark burgundy carpet, black and dark grey striped velour wingback seats that surround me like a bear hug, and a carriage full of French men dressed in their business suits. As I sit facing my man, separated by a dark faux woodgrain table, bathed in the glow of the table lamp, I anticipate tonight’s dinner. We are to dine at Paul Bocuse.

The great Paul Bocuse, legendery for his contribution to nouvelle cuisine. I’m compelled to dine there, excited and nervous at the same time. Truffle soup, for starters (created for the President in 1975 the menu proudly claims), sits at 80 euro. Whilst I acknowledge the surfing on publicity 34 years old, I accept that perhaps the modern innovation of the food may match, nonetheless I have to try it. Without question. And I have to try the whole Bresse chicken cooked in a pigs bladder, mininium two persons. I think this is what I will order. No, I don’t think, this isn’t a rational decision, it is emotional. If I was intellectually engaged, I would never pay this much money for a meal.

The TGV glides gently into Lyon, and whilst the station, Lyon Part Dieu is a hub of frenzied activity, moreso than Gare De Lyon, the station in Paris we’ve left behind, the city gives way to a far more casual, laid back, and less uptight version of Paris, yet it seems no less sophisticated. I know I’m going to like Lyon.

Arriving at Le Royal Hotel Lyon, a warm welcome precedes the moment of truth, the entry to our hotel room. The dreaded moment where expectations and fantasies meld momentarily with the potential harsh reality that creative interior photography and websites can be illusionary ‘unrealistic’. I enter and sigh. The most pleasurable sigh imaginable. A smile from ear to ear is unstoppable, the ‘happy’ tingle waves through me, and instantly I fall in love with this hotel. Tall, crisp white French doors open to a small ironwork balcony, and are framed by voluminous fabric curtains patterned in navy and white toile, the fabric repeated on the wall behind the bedhead. White painted walls, timber trims and the frame of Louis 15^th style chairs cleanly compliment the navy upholstery and runner at the base of the bed, which is topped with a spotlessly crisp white covered feathery duvet and pillows that swallow you up in a cloud like cuddle. I dare not lay too long and tempt sleep in my jetlagged state, or the chicken in pigs bladder may remain only in my dreams.

As the taxi ferries us to Bocuse, a 15 minute drive from downtown Lyon, I adjust my low cut scallop necked little black dress, black stockings and heels and eagerly anticipate our arrival. Are my expectations realistic? I hope so. Am I dressed appropriately… I hope so. The lengthy taxi ride builds the anticipation, until I fall asleep en route.

I awake with a shock, as our taxi pulls in to the brightly lit, colourful Bocuse building and the hoopla begins. With military like precision, the welcome begins first by the door opener, who walks us several metres to a few steps, where we are handed over to the next greeter, who walks us past the pumpkins on display at the door, presumably because Autumn has begun, and hands us to the next greeter. A chain of three men has been required to move us from the vehicle to the front door, this has to be 3 star service.

We enter our dining room, a heavily embellished and decorated room, separated visually from another dining room by an overshadowing enormous dark timber dresser, ornately decorated with carved animal heads and the like … and I momentarily hope the cuisine will be a little more delicate. Photographs of PB and one with his enduring wife Raymone flank the wall next to our table, and we are alone in the dining room but one other party, several generations of a family it seems … with children. I have no aversion to children, I have two of them, however their age has reached double digits, and three of these children were clearly yet to reach this milestone. Aghh. My fine dining experience at Paul Bocuse was to be shared with the kids. Cie la vie. Optimism is one of my strengths. They were actually incredibly well behaved/trained, and each time a voice was raised the adults in the party made more noise with their SSSHHHHHHHH’s, hissed in unison at the offending children.

Enter Raymone Bocuse, the well practiced hostess who floated through the room to let her presence known, stopping momentarily tableside, and softly speaking ‘bon appetit’, and then she was gone. Legend has it that during their long marriage, PB had one mistress for 50 and another for 35 years. My egalitarian self silently hopes Raymone was being serviced by the team of cooks she would oversee whilst PB travelled the world championing nouvelle cuisine.

Menus delivered, aperitifs ordered, and amuse bouch delivered … tiny cups of pumpkin soup and little choux pastries. Lovely. Not what I came for though. Stumbling with the language, dinner is ordered with much less finesse than the army of service staff demonstrate during their theatrical performance, and wine from the Rhone is on its way.

“It’s Bocuse” my partner stammers. Really? I had hoped we might meet the man himself, but on a Thursday evening in October, I didn’t like our chances. He shuffled into the dining room, and first stopped at the large table, to surprise a child with his back to him. He cuddled the child, spoke a few words to the table and headed our way. What was I going to say to Paul Bocuse? He seemed so fragile as he got closer, and limped from foot to foot. His gigantically tall hat gave his stature an additional boost. He walked like the way I felt, having worked a 21 hour day, slept for 2 hours then followed up with an allnighter, making chocolates, before I crossed time zones and travelled 23 hours in a plane and another 2 in a train, to arrive here. I wanted to jump up, wrap my strapping Aussie girl arms around him and tell him we’d come all the way from Australia. Although I didn’t want to knock him over. I wanted to tell him I couldn’t wait to try his chicken, cooked in a pigs bladder rather than heat sealed in plastic and suveed in a water bath at a precise temperature for a lengthy period. I wanted to tell him how I admired that he sourced his food locally and built his menu around this, long before my generation even started to understand the concept of ‘slow food’. He nodded his head, and spoke …. “bon appétit”. I nodded my head in return, replied “merci”, and he waddled away from my table. I was speechless.

Entrée arrives. Truffle soup V.G.E. (a dish created for the French president in 1975). Whilst I thought the warning from the waiter was that this is a ‘rich’ dish, its seems the warning was that it was actually lava hot, and I crack the top of the enormously puffy, puff pastry, narrowly avoid scalding my mouth so badly I wouldn’t be tasting anything for the next six months, and move onto tasting my dining partners entrée of pan cooked scallops with beurre blanc, and potatoes soufflés. Not necessarily a bad move. Three plump, perfectly cooked scallops surrounding baby spinach, sitting in a the most delicately sublime beurre blanc I’ve ever tasted, so perfectly balanced I was speechless, and the potatoes soufflés …. how you make a slice of potato puff and crisp like that, I do not know … but it was the perfect crunchy additional texture to a dish that almost made me cry. Yum.

The truffle soup. Delicious. The puff pastry buttery and divine, and the soup delicately truffley, without being overbearingly so. At 80 euro I think perhaps it was more about buying, I mean sharing, the same experience of the president in 1975, than the extraordinary flavours, but it was truly delicious none the less.

The main event begins. The Bresse chicken cooked in a bladder a la mere fillioux. 165 euro for two. With fan fare, and team effort, it arrives tableside and is prepared for plating. The bladder is cut and the chicken removed, dark patches under the skin suggesting there are slices of truffles hidden inside… I hoped. Indeed there were, and the truffle infused through the flesh in the most gentle way … it was truly extraordinary. “Would you like the leg madame? ….. or the breast?”, carver asks my cleavage. “The breast” I reply. The chicken was then smothered in a rich, creamy sauce … accompanied by perfectly cooked baby carrots, beans and pilaf …. This gentle, flavoursome, sublte dish was extraordinary. Extraordinarily rich, and extraordinarily beautiful. This was what we came for. A meal so perfectly crafted, so thoughtfully balanced, although I don’t want to stay the word again … it was sublime.

The army of servers however, ran off with the other half of the Bresse chicken, torn bladder flapping. Hold on …. I wanted to call them back, that was half of our main dining pleasure. I agreed to worry about that later, for now my full attention was required for the meal in front of me, as each mouthful was more beautiful than the next. It was so rich … so beautifully rich.

Dessert was to be a priority, of course, and I had tried to follow the Grace Adler buffet principle of avoiding the carbohydrate heavy foods to enable more room for the proteins … but the pilaf was so seemingly light and delicious I couldn’t help myself. Then it struck me, I had been eating long enough that the signal from my stomach had reached the brain …. I was alarmingly full. This was a crisis. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the 7 chocolates from Bernachon I just had to try an hour before dinner. Damn.

Maitre d’ returns tableside, with at least two wingmen, and asks are we ready for a second plate. Of chicken. What? Ah, what a cruel conundrum. I knew there was only room for one more round. Another plate of chicken? The incredible cheese selection? Or dessert? I shared my dilemma, and said I think I can only fit in dessert. He was shocked … surprised … shattered … and just a little insulted I think. “No leg???” he asked my breasts. “No breast for sir?” he asked my breasts again. I apologised, and said I just couldn’t, I really wanted dessert. Reluctantly he accepted, and scurried off to prepare the dessert trays.

Small rectangular tables were lined up in the middle of our dining room, where two more parties of two had joined us. Platter by platter, the tables were covered by what seemed the entire contents of a patisserie. As I was mentally deducing what I would select, a man who had welcomed us on our arrival, dressed like an organ grinder, entered the room … … with an organ … and began to grind … cranking ‘Happy Birthday’ to me, and piece of chocolate tart, with a crunchy praline base arrived at my table with a candle burning. The room of diners clapped. I smiled and sighed a happy, satisfied sigh. I chose fresh raspberries, which were plated with a raspberry coulis and cream, artistically patterned by the server before our very eyes with the precision of a magician who had clearly practiced this many times before. I also chose Crème Brulee, which didn’t have nearly enough burnt sugar on top for my liking, and I tasted floating island a la Grandma Bocuse, light, sweet and spongy. I ate the macaroons and palet d’or chocolates, and I wanted to curl up on the floor next to my table and go to sleep, very satisified. One last stop before we leave however, the toilette.

On route to the ladies room, I was required to pass through another room however, where one could purchase a memory of the evening. The plates we ate off that were branded PB, the cutlery that had been engraved ‘pb’, even the dish the truffle soup had been served in …. Topped with a brown painted ceramic lid to resemble the puff pastry, no less. This man is a marketing genius. Books, tea towels … it went on and on. Amazing. On paying the bill, closing our eyes whilst handing over the cash, we were escorted back out of the building, and handed a copy of the menu to take with us as another souvenir. It was an extraordinary evening. I would argue it is no longer 'new' cuisine, there was not a foam or dehydrated anything in sight … rather thankfully, but it was beautiful, rich, thoughtfully prepared and presented food. Three stars from me.