Lots to love about Lyon

A few recommendations after my latest visit

I’m in France for the next couple weeks, part vacation, part work, part research for my next book. I arrived last week, landing in Lyon, a city I worked in as a young pastry chef in 1989 and one I always enjoy revisiting. My last trip was in 2016, which was eight years ago but feels like yesterday.

I wrote a story about my time in Lyon (here and here) and I really should write more because it was quite an experience as a 22-year-old Canadian apprenticing in one of the city’s top pastry shops. I learned everything from entremets to ice cream, but it was the characters I worked alongside that marked me most as well as a city that at the time was the definition of “La France traditionelle.”

Back then, Lyon didn’t have one sushi bar or Burger King, and chocolate chip cookies had yet to make their way across the Atlantic. Today, Lyon is vastly different, feeling more like an international city (France’s third largest after Paris and Marseille) than the very bourgeois and very français ville I grew to love. My heart sank seeing the block pictured below with a Starbucks, Five Guys and Häagen-Dazs side by side, but good luck finding a big city these days where that’s not the case.

The good news is that Lyon still feels like an old-world European capital. OK, it’s not Budapest, but you’ll see fewer American tourist here than in Paris. With a vibrant arts scene — opera, theatre, dance, music and cinema all flourish here — and plenty of festivals, Lyon is a destination for culture vultures. And yet its reputation is that of a city of gastronomy.

Sculpture of the Weight of oneself in Lyon, France

With its two rivers (the Rhône and Saône), Vieux Lyon, and La Croix-Rousse hill as reference points, Lyon is a great walking city and walk you must, simply to get the sense of what a serious food city this is. So plentiful, in fact, are the city’s restaurants, traiteurs, pâtisseries, boulangeries, fromageries, charcuteries and chocolateries that it’s futile to recommend specific shops because the list would be too long.

That said, here are some of my recommendations.