My colleague Ruth with whom I worked for two years in Whitby was recently in France on a ski trip and made a stop to Lyon for the weekend. As she has traveled quite a lot and eaten lots of wonderful French food we decided to take her to a real, authentic Lyonnais bouchon for some homecooked delights.
I had heard about the bouchon Le Musée for quite some time and has been consistently recommended by Le Petit Paumé which is a notable restaurant guide here. It books up quickly and is quite small but is very charming. We started with an apéritif of a kir, usually a white wine with crème de cassis or framboise and munched on some gratons or pork rinds until the owner made his way to see us. He comes right over to sit at your table and presents you with the options on the menu for the evening. There's no actual menu to look at, just a list of what the kitchen is preparing that night, and since we were there nice and early we had about ten options to choose from for our starters as well as our mains!
We each ordered something different and sampled each other's plates, so to start we each had a salad and with them Ruth got a terrine, James got a dish with mushrooms and I got a modern take on a terrine with beet and goat's cheese. The owner insisted we also have a saucisson brioche which James and I had tried a couple times before, so we went with it and of course it was tasty. For our mains James ordered the queue de boeuf, Ruth had the traditional lyonnais quenelle and I ordered the lapin! It was all served with the standard accompaniments of scalloped potatoes and cooked leeks in a light cheese sauce. So good and SO filling. For dessert Ruth tried the tarte aux pralines, I got a poached pear in chocolate sauce and James sampled a some chocolat mousse and a small but of tarte aux pralines. Once we finished we were offered a digestif of an extremely strong liquor that we each sampled and then immediately decided that small amount was sufficient!
The very cool thing about this restaurant is that it's located next to one of Lyon's traboules which I've mentioned in previous posts: a walkway or courtyard connecting different buildings between streets. So as part of your dining experience, the owner takes you on a personal tour of the traboule, complete with history and humour (if you can understand him, which even we had difficulty with) and it was just a really interesting way to end the night - something unique that's for sure. It was great to be able to show Ruth a little bit of our life in Lyon and she was very pleased to get a true lyonnais experience!
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