French Restaurant Review: Les Loges, Lyon

Chef Anthony Bonnet was hugely relieved when his restaurant in the covered courtyard of a beautiful Renaissance mansion in Vieux Lyon reopened last June. “Thirty months without a kitchen is an eternity for a chef. It was becoming really difficult for me, because my cooking is so much based on following the seasons and working with the best local produce,” said Bonnet when we chatted with him after a recent excellent dinner here. I also suggested to him that if it was difficult for him to be cut off from his kitchen, it was similarly trying for his regulars, like me. I first met Bonnet when he was working with the talented chef Nicolas Le Bec, who became a major figure in Lyon in the early 2000s before closing his restaurant and moving to Shanghai. Bonnet began cooking at the Cours de Loges hotel when it was still owned by the Sibuet family, best known for their Ferme de Marie hotel in Megève. In a city renowned for its gastronomic excellence, Bonnet quickly gained a reputation for brilliant dishes like omble chevalier (a fine lake fish) marinated in cocoa bean nibs and served with a sauce of smoked Cévennes onions. His Pithiviers filled with veal sweetbreads and black truffles in a sauce soubise (onion sauce thickened with béchamel) remains one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

So my best friend in Lyon and I were thrilled to return to Les Loges and rediscover Bonnet’s sometimes pointillist-like cuisine. Since he has a passion for herbs, vegetables and fruit, spring is a wonderful season in his kitchen. We chose the €125 menu, which began with beef poached in a hay-infused bouillon – ruddy but bucolic – followed by asparagus with a caramelised vegetable jus and trout with snow peas and a white-flower infusion.

Cider-marinated veal with charred gem lettuce was at once delicate and vivacious with its measured acidity and taste of char. A shot of sprightly homemade vegetable elixir was served to jolt our digestive juices, and then the dish Bonnet is probably most famous for followed – roasted pigeon with wild garlic and mushrooms, a lusty, earthy dish that recalled the foraging expeditions Bonnet made as a boy with his grandparents in the countryside near Lyon.

“My grandparents trained my palate and awoke a love for and curiosity about good food in me,” the chef told us.

We finished with a dessert that summarised the energy and freshness of spring in a bowl: strawberries with savoury – an intriguing combination, since the resinousness of the herb brought out the vegetal notes of the berry – rhubarb with honey and Venezuelan chocolate.

The excellent wine list features bottles from the regions surrounding Lyon, including the Beaujolais, Jura, Rhône Valley and Savoie – my picks to accompany Bonnet’s cooking would be a white Mâcon or Beaujolais and a nice Morgon from Domaine Jean Foillard.

6 rue du Bœuf, Lyon, Tel. +33 04 72 77 44 46,

www.courdesloges.com. Dinner only, prix-fixe menus €125, €165.

From France Today Magazine

Lead photo credit : AGENCE PANCAKE, JULES FOCONE, NICOLAS VILLION