A bouchon is a type of restaurant found in Lyon that serves traditional Lyonnaise cuisine, such as sausages, duck pâté or roast pork. Foreigners often find the cuisine presented to be strongly oriented around meat, and rather fatty. There are around 20 officially certified traditional bouchons, but a larger number of establishments describing themselves using the term. The word is unrelated to the modern French word meaning "cork" or "traffic jam," but is rather connected to the word "bouche" meaning "mouth." City motto: Avant, avant, Lion le melhor. ... A cuisine (from French cuisine, meaning cooking; culinary art; kitchen; itself from Latin coquina, meaning the same; itself from the Latin verb coquere, meaning to cook) is a specific set of cooking traditions and practices, often associated with a place of origin. ...

Typically, the emphasis in a bouchon is not on haute cuisine, but rather, a convivial atmosphere and a personal relationship with the owner. Haute cuisine (literally high cooking in French) is a cookery style that originated in Napoleonic France under the influence of the chef Antoine Carême and was elaborated by Auguste Escoffier. ...

History

The tradition of bouchons came from small inns visited by silk workers passing through Lyon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gradually the convention arose of placing a pine branch, dubbed a "bousche", over the door of these inns. The restaurants carrying these branches thus became known as "bouchons".

Today

These bouchons are considered "authentic", as certified by the organisation Les Authentiques Bouchons Lyonnais: Abel, Brunet, Café des deux places, Café des fédérations, Daniel et Denise, Chez Georges le petit bouchon, Les gones, Hugon, Le Jura, Chez Marcelle, Le Mercière, La mère Jean, Le mitonné, Le Morgon, Le musée, Chez Paul, Les Trois Maries, A ma vigne, and Le vivarais. The list is somewhat subject to fluctuation.

While many bouchons are now oriented strongly towards the tourist market, with increased prices and less traditional fare as a result, a typical meal in a real bouchon costs around €12-15 as of 2006. 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Cuisine

Typical items in the bouchon repertoire include:

Soup

Tripe soup, pumpkin soup

Salads and cold entrées

Chicken liver salad, pig's head cheese, groins d'âne moulinhuile, marinaded herrings

Hot entrées

Chicken liver cake, apple and pork boudin (sausage)

Offal

Andouillette (pork offal sausage), assorted offal gratin

Fish

Stingray, quenelles (fish dumplings), grilled fillets

Meat

Coq au vin, pot au feu (pot roast), chicken thighs stuffed with morilles (mushrooms), rabbit with chestnut

Vegetables

Cardons à la moelle (leek in bone marrow), barboton, pailasson de Lyon

Desserts

Walnut tart, lemon meringue pie, caramelised apples, bugnes de Lyon (miniature beignets)

Head cheese is in fact not a cheese, but rather a terrine made of meat taken from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow) that would not otherwise be considered appealing. ... Species Clupea alba Clupea bentincki Clupea caspiopontica Clupea chrysotaenia Clupea elongata Clupea halec Clupea harengus Clupea inermis Clupea leachii Clupea lineolata Clupea minima Clupea mirabilis Clupea pallasii Clupea sardinacaroli Clupea sulcata Herrings are small oily fish of the genus Clupea found in the temperate, shallow waters of the North Atlantic... Boudin (pronounced BOO-dan) describes a number of different types of sausage. ... Andouilette is a sausage-like speciality from France, differing in content depending on what version you get. ... Two halves of a pig being delivered Pork is the meat taken from pigs. ... Offal is the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal. ... Gratin is a type of casserole from French cuisine that is covered with cheese or buttered breadcrumbs and baked or broiled. ... A quenelle is a type of forcemeat, or ground meat patty, made with a delicate white meat or fish and very lightly spiced, so that it is much more delicately flavored than sausage, for instance. ... Many French regions claim coq au vin, or chicken stew, as their own, but legend has it that the recipe originated with Caesars chef. ... Wikibooks Cookbook has more about this subject: Pot roast Pot roast is a braised beef dish. ... Lemon meringue pie is a dessert made with a pastry base, lemon curd filling and a fluffy meringue topping. ... Bugnes are a culinary speciality from central-eastern France, including Lyon and Saint-Étienne, closely related to beignets. ... A beignet (pronounced ben–YAY) is a pastry made from fried dough and sprinkled with confectioners sugar. ...

References

• Everylen et Jean-Marc Boudou (2003). Les Bonnes Recettes des Bouchons Lyonnais, Libris. ISBN 284799002X.