It's Me, Sara Louise

The last time I was in Lyon was over two years ago. The Husband and I had gone to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Unfortunately when we arrived home from our weekend away, we found out my father was gravely ill. My father’s passing has kind of marred that Lyon trip for me. I remember loving it, but that weekend will always be connected to sadness in my memory so I’ve been anxious to get back to Lyon for a do over. 

Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France. Think about that for a second… France is already food paradise so Lyon is like the Disneyland of food. We were meeting my friend Sarah (she’s the one who rescued us in London) and her husband for a weekend away. We decided on Lyon because while Sarah and I like food, our husbands like to eat. 

After checking into Mama Shelter we made our way to Brasserie Georges, a Lyon institution. Brasserie Georges specializes in Charcuterie which I thought for sure one of us would order but nope; Sarah had fish, The Husband ordered Boudin, I had a steak topped with the largest, most delectable pat of butter there ever was, and Sarah’s husband had the Steak Tartare (he likes raw meat as much as The Husband does).

After lunch we headed straight to Les Halles, Lyon’s indoor food market, in search of dessert and other goodies. 

After wandering around looking at all of the delectable goodies, we finally settled on dessert, a plate of fresh oysters and a glass of chilled Chablis. (I did however pick up an assortment of macarons for Honey Jr and Honey’s Honey as a thank you for watching Fifty. The flavors were too fun to pass up.) 

On the way out we picked up a bottle of Rosé, brought it back to the hotel and kept it chilled in the sink. This wasn’t any bottle of Rosé, this was a bottle of Miravel, Brangelina’s new Rosé. At €18 it’s quite pricey. (I’m talking Provence prices. I know that in other parts of the world you have to break the bank to get a decent bottle of Rosé, but here, you can get a good bottle for €8 and that’s a GOOD bottle, I usually spend about €5.) It was also kind of MEH. It wasn’t bad, it was just MEH… in short, I’ve had better. Sorry Brad & Angie. 

For dinner we ate at the Mama Shelter restaurant (just like we did in Marseille). There was a cheese platter on the appetizer menu. (Do you know that in France appetizers are called entrées? It’s very confusing). Now that may not seem weird to you, but in France, cheese always comes after the meal, not before, but that still didn’t stop us from ordering it. (My mother was having a dinner party back in Dublin when The Husband and I still lived there, and she had a cheese plate with grapes and crackers set up as an hors d’oeuvre, this basically made The Husband’s head explode… and so did the crackers). 

We had a basket of tasty tempura calamari and eggplant too, which I pretty much hogged, which was good, because I ordered the hot dog for dinner (it seemed kitschy and weirdly, I was in the mood for a hot dog) and it was gross. It had obviously been left under the heat lamp too long… the bun was warm but the hot dog had gone cold. But even if it hadn’t had gone cold, it was yucky. I think it was a chicken hot dog or something. BLECH. So in summation, don’t order the hot dog at Mama Shelter. 

Because we obviously hadn’t gotten our fill of food over the weekend, on the way home we stopped at The Gypsy’s for a barbecue (he’s currently between Lyon and Avignon). While we were there I made friends with this little guy whose going to be trained to hunt truffles as soon as he’s old enough. And as soon as he graduates from truffle school, I’m think he should come for a visit and teach Fifty the truffle trade. It’s about time that guy got a job.