The foodiest corner in France may start with its gastronomic capital Lyon, but to really indulge the tastebuds, strike out to the south to the department of Drome after a few days in the city. My story for The Times (read the shorter version here – and yes they spell it ‘Lyons’ as it’s their house style, like Marseilles). The longer version with a bit more detail about Drome is below. It’s also very close to the Vercors, which I explored for this story so if you wanted to combine all three destinations in one trip, then it’s ideal for 7-10 days.
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There are things the French do well: fashion, art, cooking, the Gallic Shrug. They also do a good line in great big, jaw-dropping, whizz-bang tourist attractions dedicated to such things as motorcars, prehistoric art, chocolate and wine. Imagine, then, what awe such a place dedicated to gastronomy could inspire, especially being set in France’s foodie capital – Lyon.
The hotly anticipated Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie opened in October after eight years in development and promises to whet – and sate – the appetite of 300,000 visitors annually. Set in the Hotel Dieu, the medieval hospital that is one of Lyons’s most respected buildings, the four-level Cité forms the central part of a €20 million redevelopment that incorporates a new shops, bars and restaurants and an Intercontinental Hotel, all set around the courtyards and cloisters that bear the names of four centuries’ of hospital donors.
When I step through the doors for a sneak preview of two weeks before opening, almost everything is in place; the interactive exhibits on food from around the world, a bold and technicolour area for children, and hi-tech experiences that celebrate the fact that the ‘Gastronomic French meal’ is so revered it holds Unesco World Heritage Status. On the top level, ten chefs will be doing live cooking demonstrations and offering tasting plates that celebrate a particular ingredient or food culture from around the world.
In the ‘Bon Appetit’ section, we see the very stove (or wonderfully named ‘piano de cuisson’ in French) used for 25 years by the father of French cuisine, Paul Bocuse, whose restaurant just outside Lyons has held three Michelin stars since 1965. ‘Monsieur Paul’ died last year at the age of 91 and the story of how he took hearty French cuisine to the world has an important place here, along with his passion that good ingredients, grown locally, are the key to good food.
We learn how Lyons’s role as the country’s food capital began thanks to the ‘Mères de Lyons’ (the ‘Mothers of Lyons’); several generations of skilled female cooks, who date back to the mid-18th century. They were the city’s first celebrity chefs, the most famous being Mère Brazier from whom Bocuse learned his trade.
We also learn how the Michelin Guide was born of the French tyre manufacturer’s desire to encourage motorists to travel further to dine, and wear out more tyres. And we see how other chefs’ fame grew from being such ‘destination’ restaurants, spawning several dynasties of chefs; the Troisgros family, Jacques Pic and his daughter Anne-Sophie, Jacques and Regis Marcon, whose respective three-star restaurants are all within an hour of Lyons.
These exhibits, and those that tell the history of medical care at the Hotel Dieu, are the most static though; elsewhere, the digital world takes over. And this is the very reason it is not called a ‘museum’. Director Florent Bonnetain tells me the word museum suggests an image of stuffy cabinets and two-dimensional exhibits. Having been created by the same team (Magmacultura) behind the bigger Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, set in its €80 million swirling glass tower, it is hoped that this project will inspire the same level of excitement.
However, its setting in the Hotel Dieu, with its soaring ceilings and ancient walls, means space is more limited and so they have had to prioritise, with many exhibits focussing on the link between food and health. Given that it will eventually be one of four such centres (of course France needs more than one; the others in Dijon, Tours, and the enormous trade food market Rungis in Paris will be completed in the next five years) means it whets your appetite for more.
Having closed as a hospital in 2010, these hallowed halls that once welcomed Rabelais as a physician are also the birthplace of one in three of Lyons inhabitants, even today. “The Hotel Dieu has a special place in the hearts of the Lyonnais,” says Bonnetain. Historically, the elegant façade that overlooks the Rhône was the gateway to the city, and this part is now occupied by the Intercontinental Hotel, where the 144 rooms either look out over the river, where the colourful lights from the opposite buildings glisten on the water, or over the rooftops towards Vieux Lyon where the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière gazes down from the hill. The hotel’s pièce de la resistance is the bar in the soaring central dome, where cocktails are served and state-of-the-art technology eliminates the echo in the cathedral-like space.
In the Cité, too, the historic setting plays host to a digital playground. In the children’s area ‘Miam-Miam’ (French for yum yum), kids can enter a giant cookpot and guess the different smells that puff out of a tube at the press of a button; or learn about dairy products from a giant milk carton.
In the section titled À Table, I sit at a dining table, with clips of some of France’s most famous dining-table film scenes projected onto the silhouette of other the other diners: La Grande Bouffe, Marie-Antoinette. Other displays see digital stallholders present their wares in a kind of educational marketplace, celebrating various fêted French ingredients. Another display shows how Lyons is the epicentre of France’s most gastronomic regions. From the wine of Beaujolais, to the cheese of the Alps, to the poultry of Bresse and the beef of Charolais.
The most enticing area, however, is La Drôme: the land of Montelimar nougat, of France’s best olives, of Rhone Valley wines and of miles and miles of orchards growing cherries, apricots and peaches. The department will play a key role in the new Vallée de la Gastronomie, a new foodie trail that will run all the way from Dijon in Burgundy down to Marseilles on the coast. When it launches in the spring, it is hoped the mouth-watering itinerary of gourmet pitstops, from restaurants to food producers to vineyards, will attract gluttons to discover new areas of France.
And so, inspired by the new Cité and after indulging in Lyons’ other gastronomic haunts – its Bouchon restaurants that first catered to the city’s 18th- and 19th-century silk trade, the enormous food market Les Halles de Lyon – Paul Bocuse, and a gut-busting and utterly enchanting lunch at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant L’Auberge de Collonges d’Or – I take the 35-minute train journey to the department’s capital, Valence.
If Lyons is Paul Bocuse’s town, then Valence belongs to Anne-Sophie Pic. The three-star Michelin chef, who a fortnight ago won a second Michelin star for her London restaurant La Dame de Pic, continues the family tradition from her father Jacques Pic and grandfather André. The town sits on the banks of the River Rhône. Here, overlooking the silver cliffs of the neighbouring department Ardèche, Chef Pic’s most modest establishment – Daily Pic – offers a very sophisticated brand of fast food, which serves its dishes (€15.90 for two courses) in the glass confit jars the French do so well and there is not an inch of plastic to be found. Of course her three-star Michelin restaurant is the epitome of gastronomic prowess in Valence, but Daily Pic and her more casual Bistrot André deliver a passion for good food and service that I find everywhere in the town, from the Boulangerie Nivon which has been baking the traditional brioche ring ‘la pogne’ for more than 150 years, to the buzzing Saturday morning market brimming with glossy vegetables, voluptuous cèpes mushrooms and golden lavender honey, all overlooked by the Romanesque tower of the cathedral.
My onward journey takes me up-river from Valence, where neat rows of terraced vineyards overlook the town of Tain L’Hermitage. Principally a wine town, it has another not-so-secret ingredient in its success: the Valrhona chocolate brand. Its town-centre factory plays host to the ‘Cité du Chocolat’, where your entry ticket comes with two squares of the high-quality chocolate and from there on, you can scoff as much chocolate as you can stomach as you learn about the cocoa plantations in Madagascar, chocolate’s ingredients, and the wonders of French patisserie, all with the help of screens, buttons and chocolate dispensers.
After approximately 12 pieces of chocolate, the sugar high presses me on to explore the surrounding vineyards and after a tasting at one of local wineries, Maison M. Chapoutier, I drive to the town’s most scenic point. High above the vineyards the Chapelle Tain L’Hermitage offers a breath-taking view of the Rhône. To the east, the mountains of the Vercors mark out a jagged horizon and the silver expanse of the river snakes south across the vast landscape, seemingly signalling ‘more food this way’.
I make a pitstop in Montélimar, on my drive further south. It’s a peculiar place, where seemingly every industrial unit in its sprawling suburbs seems to be proffering the local delicacy nougat. Made with almonds growing in the groves nearby, their pink blossoms drenched in Provencale sunshine, and flavoured with honey from bees that collect their nectar in the Drome’s many lavender fields, it’s little wonder the confection has become synonymous with the town. At one of the oldest manufacturers, Nougat Arnaud Soubeyran, a little museum tells the story of the family-run company, of the town’s popularity with motorists (that Michelin guide again…) and how the nougat is made.
It’s a sweet (excuse the pun) little place, and just the kind of attraction to which the Vallée de la Gastronomie project hopes to draw visitors. Further south, though, this land of bounty speaks for itself. As I approach the village of Grignan, the road divides vineyards and cherry orchards, the trees’ leaves shimmering in the breeze under a clear blue sky. When I swing around the corner and catch my first sight of Grignan itself, I nearly crash the car; the village’s Renaissance chateau sits atop steep golden-stone walls, surrounded the its village, and in turn the neat rows of lavender fields that bloom bright in summer. All those I meet before this point have asked ‘Are you going to Grignan?’ and when I’ve replied yes, they’ve given a knowing nod as if to say ‘Well, you’d be mad to miss it’. The chef at the helm of the hotel-restaurant Le Clair de la Plume is Julian Allano, whose Michelin-starred menus feature the produce of the moment, being so ephemeral he seems to make up his mind about what to serve when he welcomes me to the restaurant and asks if I have any dislikes. The highlight of the four-course meal is the cheese course, which comes in the form of a tiny honey-infused disc of frozen Saint-Marcellin cheese, which explodes in flavour as it hits my taste-buds.
The next morning, I wander around the village, all winding alleys and sensational views and stand out on the towering walls beneath the chateau to gaze out over the golden-green landscape. I resolve to return for lunch, but that’s before I drive the road to Nyons. The town is famous for its olives; the mountains here cradle the landscape in such a way that the warm climate from the Mediterranean breezes up to create the perfect growing conditions.
But before I reach the town, which sits snugly along the banks of the sinuous River Aigues, I drive a road that makes my heart sing. To my right, groves of ancient olive trees with dumpy trunks and grey-green leaves fade into the distance; to my left the neat rows of vineyards gasp their last breath of green before turning golden for autumn, and up ahead, the silhouette of rounded wooded hills.
When I get to Nyons, and park under a Cypress pine, I understand why locals call it ‘Petit Nice’. Its buildings are painted terracotta, ochre and pink; today there’s even a pétanque tournament in the square. I snap up bottles of gourmet olive oil at the local cooperative-cum-museum where 1100 farmers combine their efforts to produce exceptional oil. Elsewhere, I buy raspberry vinegar at La Vinaigrerie La Para, where owner Raphael tells me how he gave up a hotshot job in international wine sales to brew his own gourmet vinegar. And then I have lunch in the narrow main street, buzzing with pavement cafes and restaurants, with all the conviviality and passion of that revered French meal-time.
Yes, there are some things the French do well, like super, whizz-bang tourist attractions, but there are things they do better: making food and eating it.
Need to know:
Carolyn Boyd was a guest of Intercontinental Hotel-Dieu, Lyon Tourist Office (https://en.visiterlyon.com/) and Drôme Tourism (https://www.ladrometourisme.com/).
Where to stay:
Intercontinental Hotel Dieu is part of the Cité complex with an impressive bar in the ‘dome’. Room-only doubles from £294.50 (00 33 4 13 42 42 42, https://www.ihg.com/intercontinental/hotels/gb/en/marseille/mrsha/hoteldetail).
In Valence: Hotel Victoria is a brand new boutique hotel in the town centre. Room-only doubles from €120.
In Grignan: Le Clair de la Plume is set in an 17th and 19th century mansion, and has a one-Michelin star restaurant. Room-only doubles from €99 (00 33 4 75 91 81 30, clairplume.com).