French Restaurant Review: Aux Lyonnais, Paris
Drawing from Lyon’s traditional bouchons restaurants and the cooking of Les Mères de Lyon, the new chef of Aux Lyonnais in Paris, Victoria Boller, has created a bold and modern menu that has yielded enticing and delicious results.
I’ve loved this restaurant near the Palais Brongniart, or former Paris stock exchange, in the heart of Paris ever since I first parted the heavy, dark red velvet curtains on a horse-shaped brass curtain ring that block draughts at its front door on a cold, rainy September day in 1988. That day, the front windows were streaked with rivulets of condensation because the besuited stockbrokers and bankers dining here at noon were talking a blue streak. I stood at the reservation desk waiting for the hostess and admired the repeating floral garland of the Art Nouveau tile wainscotting, the tile-framed mirrors and the disused gas chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling of the place, which opened in 1890. The older, mostly blonde waitresses in black dresses with white aprons dispensed wisecracks that drew guffaws as they threaded their way through the crowded dining room, crackling with locker-room levels of testosterone and whooping laughter, a place that was bluntly perfumed by the smells of damp wool and wet shoe leather, red Beaujolais, and the plates of plump, sliced pistachio-speckled sausage with boiled potatoes and squares of golden tablier de sapeur (breaded deep-fried tripe) with frites, which were the daily specials. I was meeting my friend Judy, a magazine editor in Paris, as part of a story I was writing for her on restaurants serving regional French cuisine in Paris.
That day, we ate a big salade lyonnaise – curly endive with lardons and poached eggs in a sharp vinaigrette – and then heaps of sausage and potatoes washed down with easy-drinking Coteaux du Lyonnais red wine served à la ficelle, or from flasks where you only pay for what you drink, Cervelle de Canut followed –faisselle whipped with crème fraîche, olive oil, chopped shallots, minced garlic and a sprinkling of chives, parsley and tarragon. We both loved this homey Lyonnais comfort food, and finally we split a slice of tarte à la praline, a tart topped with crushed, dark-pink candied almonds, a local speciality, for dessert.
Since then, I’ve been often, and watched this restaurant evolve, too. Sadly, this strand of the French capital’s restaurant scene has thinned out considerably as the owners of some of the best-known restaurants retired and went home to the quieter corners of Gaul from which they came, and a younger generation came of age with little knowledge or interest in their country’s regional kitchens. Aux Lyonnais struggled for several years after the French stock exchange stopped live trading and left the neighbourhood, causing an exodus of many of its most loyal and enthusiastic clients. I feared it might close, but happily Alain Ducasse took it over in 2002, and under his wing for 22 years, it has remained an excellent restaurant.
Having heard a new chef had recently arrived, I eagerly went to lunch here a few weeks ago, and had a truly spectacular meal. Chef Victoria Boller was born in Lyon, grew up in Beaujolais and cooked at Le Cep and the Hotel Negresco before being tapped to design a new menu for Aux Lyonnais by Alain Ducasse. Suffice it to say that he made a shrewd decision when he hired her.
Over glasses of Condrieu, my friend Loulou and I nibbled crispy pig’s ears and studied the menu, which was enticing. What I immediately noticed is that it had become more broadly Lyonnais than bouchon-oriented, a wise idea since traditional bouchon food is hearty and includes a lot of offal (French consumption of offal has never recovered from the Mad Cow’s Disease crisis, especially since many younger French are as squeamish about it as a lot of foreigners are). Before we ordered, the waiter brought a slice of rabbit terrine with hot toast to the table, because the chef was eager for us to try it. Emollient, beautifully seasoned and accompanied with a citrus condiment, it was a masterful and intriguingly original expression of the charcutier’s art. Our starters were similarly provocative modern renditions of two of the great classics of the Lyonnais table – quenelles de brochet (pike perch dumplings) and saucisson poached in Gamay wine. The fluffy quenelles came on a bed of pale orange homardine sauce with tarragon and had been gratinéed under a light blanket of crème de riz. A thick chunk of homemade sausage in a dark-red casing, tinted by being simmered in Gamay, was escorted by two corkscrew pieces of apple lightly poached in sugar syrup and a sage-leaf sabayon.
Both dishes were beautifully executed expressions of the chef’s goal, which is to create a contemporary Lyonnais kitchen that draws inspiration both from the city’s bouchons and the cooking of the famous Mères de Lyon, the female chefs who made Lyon such a great gastronomic destination. As Boller later explained, she eliminated the sauce écrevisses (crayfish) that quenelles are usually served with because these small freshwater crustaceans are nearly extinct in France and the quality of those imported from. eastern Europe did not meet her standards, and so she used a brighter lobster sauce instead. “The crème de riz gratinée is to keep the quenelles moist, and crème de riz is healthy, protein-rich product that easily replaces cream,” she explained. For mains, a succulent Salers steak was served with gratin dauphinois made in the style of Fernand Point, another legendary chef in the Lyonnais region, and poularde de Bresse, from the famed poultry-raising region outside of Lyon, was served with parsnip purée and fresh dandelion leaves, the bitterness of which was a superb follow against the sweetness of the partnership and barnyard grandeur of the fowl. A bottle of Cornas, one of my favourite wines, from Bott vineyards, accompanied these dishes with a nonchalant elegance. We concluded the meal by sharing a perfectly aged Saint-Marcellin cheese and a then a slice of tarte praline. This was an outstanding meal at Aux Lyonnais, which is open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner.
Aux Lyonnais, 32, rue Saint-Marc, 2nd arrondissement, Paris, +33 01 42 96 65 04,
From France Today Magazine
Lead photo credit : © Aux Lyonnais
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