Marseille to Lyon

On the recommendation of our fellow guest worker on the St Affrique farm, we found a new mode of transportation to add to our now long list (plane, scooter, motorcycle, bus, train, boat, camel, horse) to get us to Lyon from Marseille. In stark contrast to the heavily subsidized Italian train system, France's over ground transportation options are super expensive which seems to have inspired the growth of a national (and international apparently) carpool system called coivoiturage(.fr). Someone puts up an ad for a certain route, asks a certain price, and you sort out the rest from there. We found a ride with a young guy originally from Paris and working in Marseille, which was a fun change - he practiced English (a lot, this dude was a real talker), I practiced a bit of French and we listened to a lot of French electronic music. Think we'll try the same for getting to Paris. 

While Marseille was nice, the over all vibe was 'big industrial town with small focused tourism market' and Lyon feels like a more dynamic place. While it has its own kitschy tourist oriented "old" section, like Marseille's Vieux Port, serving up various traditional offal (organ meat) dishes rather than bouillabaisse, Lyon is known for and still deserves (as far as I can tell) its title as the culinary capital of France. 

We spent our first afternoon wandering the quaint streets and tree lined riverside. Enjoyed our first-in-France cup of chocolat chaud (basically a melted chocolate bar in a mug) and enjoyed our go-to cheap European dinner of a few kebabs in a restaurant around the corner named after our number-one destination in Turkey that we never made it to (Pammukale). 

Yesterday was largely laid back, with a bit of time wandering the streets of the neighborhood surrounding the brand-new hostel we're staying in, and a lot of time sorting out details for the Isle of Man and Spain. A good college friend of mine who's spent the past five years or so in London decided to take a short-notice break from the dreadful English weather and join us for a few days, which was a wonderful change up. In celebration of old reunions and being in the so called French culinary epicenter (and by traditional default, possibly the world) we decided to kick up our food game a notch and I called in a reservation at a fantastically reviewed, Michelin starred little restaurant on the other side of town, Maison Clovis. It was hard to turn down the opportunity to splurge at least once in France, Lyon especially, and Maison Clovis seemed to occupy a sweet spot of not being absurdly expensive but still offering a taste of real innovation and Michelin level quality. The work that went into that menu, for a small restaurant, seemed staggering, the service had what seemed to be the right level of restrained polish, and the few wine pairings we tried were lovely. Here are the pictures!

Started with a wonderful Chablis

Spanish mackerel, roasted vegetables, olive toast, pea soup

I'm not sure I've ever seen this many individually prepared components on a single plate. Smoked eggplant (incredible), fava beans, roasted pine nuts, red pepper, artichoke (and much more), paired with roasted sea bream, some sort of tuile, and a basil emulsion. 

Left to right: poached lobster, saffron risotto, carrot foam; veal sweatbreads, roasted mushrooms, demiu-glace; butter poached oyster with sauteed spinach.

Pan roasted pigeon (very rare, very delicious), pigeon heart pate (on a heart shaped cracker - adorable),  roasted spring vegetables, truffle demi-glace

Fresh cheese sorbet

Dessert was a little basic compared to what lead up to it, but I'm never one to scoff at  high quality chocolate. Berries in cream, 72% Venezuelan chocolate souffle, chocolate sorbet

Incredible dinner, one the most impressive menus we've ever sat down to. With our travel budget shaved down a bit, we'll be back to our thrifty sampling of local charcuterie and baked goods for a bit, but that's not so bad either.