Tag Archives: Lyon

Gones up the country: Episode 20 Far from the madding crowd

My overwhelming reaction to the best part of a week away from France, mostly spent in London, was OMFG where did all these people come from. I lived in London twice for periods of 4 years in and around Clapham Junction and having friends who sensibly stayed put while I went off a wandering, I have spent time there every year since the 1980’s. Despite Brexit that corner of London is still full of French ex-pats, there is a French kindergarten school or ‘école maternelle’ and a junior school or ‘college’ as well as the most ridiculously priced pâtisserie ‘Aux Merveillieux de Fred’. Their little marvels are meringues of multiple and complex flavors with cutesy names like The Incroyable or The Impensable. They do a very good croissant and brioche too. All at prices that are seriously 5-10 times what you would pay in France, London prices are a shock to the system and even my Londoner friends think Fred is taking the piss. Getting into London and getting around is easy with trains to Waterloo and Victoria and the Tube at Clapham South, so for visiting it is the perfect base. I use my visits to stock up on “posh tea” from M&S or Waitrose, Branston, Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade. I used to pick up Marmite but now this is reliably found in most large french supermarkets, it’s good that our acquired taste of a treacly brewer’s yeast has gradually worked its sticky way into the French palate.

Like all London streets, the stores and businesses evolve and change over time and Northcote Road is no different. Where Fred’s mortgage-worthy merveillieux now sit displayed was originally a family butchers, Dove and Sons. They had a reputation for being tied in some vague way to the Richardsons, arch enemy of the Kray twins. They were smart enough to spot the gentrification around them and raised the quality and range of products to go organic and include pheasant, guinea fowl and Angus beef while the other butchers, Hennesey was still serving the locals with lamb chops, sausages and belly pork. Hennesey’s is there still to this day, but that may be because Dove made enough money to sell up and retire years ago. What were banks are now universally pubs and have been for years, while the other staples, the estate agents, are more numerous and fancier with some of the names changing to global brands. Two standouts from the 90’s are still there, Hamish Johnstone and Philglas and Swiggot. The former is a fabulous cheese shop, the kind that is staffed by complete cheese anoraks. Full of amazing farmhouse British cheeses as well as the French hits, olive wood cheese boards, expensive chutneys and anything savory with ‘Artisanal’ on the label somewhere. I indulged. Isle of Mull strong Cheddar, Sparkenhoe Red Leicester, Cropwell Bishop Shropshire Blue and Yoredale Wensleydale made their way back to France. Philglas, by their punny name, is a wine shop of diverse taste and range, primarily focused on smaller producer and the kind of wines not found in the local supermarkets. English wine shops struggle not to be snobbish but generally the staff at Philglas err on the side of nerdy knowledge that they are happy to share, especially if you give them some reasonable guidance like “easy drinking southern Rhone under 20 quid”, and they usually have the good grace to not laugh out loud.

The newcomers to the street are the ever-rotating cast of restaurants on the crest of the latest trend, a new Danish coffee house, yet another pizza place, a vegan café and a Thai all competing with the two old Italian restaurants that have been there forever and of course Nandos. The other newcomers are hawking beauty treatments, injections, laser, surgeries and general Kardashianization processes as the British have definitely embraced their inner selfy, even at the cost of looking the same as everyone else.

With my suitcase full of treats and surprises, marmalade stowed safely inside my running shoes I flew home into a rainy Lyon airport, for once slightly ahead of time, passport control was breezy and the bag of treats arrived on the carousel within 3 minutes. If I had ventured into the bakers on my return, it would have been marked on the chalkboard that it was the feast day of St Alban. Alban is of course that rare beast, an English saint. Growing up in the West Country there were St Alban’s schools and a local hospital in his name and of course the town of St Albans north of London. Alby is the first English saint or ‘Protomartyr’ so now I know where the excellent band got their name. If you are unfamiliar with their shouty fun, check them out here. Alban according to quite a few sources does seem to have existed and was a typical Romano Briton at a time when the Empire was still trying to kill all the Christians. He sheltered a priest who was being hunted and was miraculously converted by the stoicism of the priest in the face of his persecution. He swapped cloaks and surrendered himself in the place of the priest when the soldiers came knocking. The local Roman chief honcho thought a sound scourging would do the trick, but when the beatings didn’t have the desired effect, decided that Alban was for the chop. Alban was led off to his execution when they came to a fast-flowing river that could not be crossed. There was a bridge, but a rentamob of curious townspeople who wanted to watch the execution (burn the witch!) had so clogged the bridge that the execution party could not cross. In an apparent hurry to get to martyrdom, Alby raised his eyes pleadingly to heaven, and the river miraculously dried up, allowing him and his captors to cross over. The astonished executioner, black hood and all, drops his sword falling at Alban’s feet, freaked out by the instant drought happenings and trying to keep on the right side of powers greater than himself, starts pleading that he will suffer alongside Alban or be executed instead of him. The other trainee and assistant executioners, obviously a little freaked out themselves, hesitated to pick up the sword. Meanwhile, Alby and the now large crowd go on up a gently sloping hill, completely covered with all kinds of wildflowers. When Alban reached the top of the hill, he began to feel a bit parched what with all the drama, so asked out loud for God to give him water. Bingo, another water trick and a spring immediately bubbles up at his feet. By now the assistant executioner has had enough of the messing around with water and abruptly cuts his head off, as well as the head of the official executioner who had refused to execute him, for good measure, and ‘pour encourager les autres’. The legend per the Venerable Bede, obviously wanting Team God to have the last word, is that immediately after delivering the fatal stroke, the eyes of the second executioner popped out of his head and dropped to the ground, along with Alban’s head; keeping his eyes on the prize in a maudlin way. If you want to revisit all this, the cathedral of St Albans is built on the supposed site in the former Roman town of Veralanium in Hertfordshire. As you can imagine with all of the water tricks and miracles his legend spread far and wide and there are churches in his name across northern Europe, the German’s being big fans. In fact, when Henry the 8th dissolved the monasteries the relics of the saint were removed from St Alban’s abbey on its closure in 1539 and some ended up in St Pantaleon’s abbey in Cologne. They gifted his shoulder blade in 2002 to the current cathedral, probably hoping to make up for other gifts they inadvertently dropped in the area during the Blitz.

The castle in Chassy

It is actually starting to feel like summer finally now the waterboarding, masquerading as Spring, has finished. The humidity has been very popular with the slugs so while away in Lyon the garden in Saone et Loire has been eaten almost in its entirety, vegetables, flowers and even a decorative tree, ironically toxic to humans. We have been waging war since our return, using the vinegar filled ‘bucket of death’ to kill our hand-picked harvest of slugs as well as beer traps (which really work), coffee grounds (do not work) and tin foil around the tree trunk (kinda works). With the help of the newly arrived sun we think we are winning, and I can try again to plant a summer crop of tomatoes, squash and beans. The battle continues.

In Chassy, a very pretty little village not far from Guegnon is found JK. a restaurant opened only 18 months ago by Kevin and Jeanne. Kevin is from Bologna and Jeanne is more local. They met while they were both working under Doucet in Charolles and their eponymous country restaurant is both beautiful in its setting and very accomplished in its food and service. It received its first entry in Michelin this year with a Bib Gourmand ranking, and it was well deserved. We went for dinner on Saturday. They offer no choice other than how you want your pleasure, in 3, 5 or 7 servings. They obviously take note of any likes, dislikes or aversions but part of the joy is the pleasant surprise of each dish. The food reflects the Italian and French influences and is a great blend of local and southern European dishes but recreated from local ingredients. They are nice people, and it is reflected in the young but hardworking front of house service team, happy and enjoying what they do. It’s worth the journey, the village itself is very picturesque with options to stay overnight nearby at a gite in the outbuildings of the castle up on the hill, and a small cottage gite next door. Go visit!

Gones for good: Episode 18 swifts arriving for the summer

One of the most heartwarming sounds in the morning is the high-pitched whistle of the swifts as they wheel and bomb around the apartment. We are currently having a stand-off with two morning doves who are trying to nest in my herb pots on the kitchen windowsill, they are determined but so are we. There is no shortage of available roof and sill space in the city, so using my thyme and rosemary pot is off-limits. Other unwelcome visitors were the invasion last weekend of the ‘Swifties’, a predominantly North American bird, usually spotted in an Era’s t-shirt and pulling a wheelie bag. Taylor Swift played two concerts at the OL stadium on Sunday and Monday night. As you may have read, the ridiculous scandal of concert prices in the US, thanks to the evil empire that is Live Nation, reached its nadir this week with the Justice Department in the US now conducting an antitrust investigation into their activities. Their ticket system crashed when the Swift tour tickets went on sale and when it finally came back up somehow the true fans were not able to buy the tickets but the ticket resellers or touts managed to get most of the allocation. This resulted in the tickets being so expensive that people from the US found it cheaper to buy round trip airfare to Europe, hotels and concert tickets in Madrid or Lyon instead. If you are at all interested in the machinations of the sordid story of Live Nation – Ticketmaster, read the recent excellent “Big” column by Matt Stoller here, or the takedown by Cory Doctorow here.

Kevin's bed

This week has been hot and wet and felt like summer, to the point where we are desperate to get out of town and head to the cooler, greener countryside of Saone et Loire. I have a trip to England for work to get out of the way first, but we will soon fly north to avoid the constant noise of the roadworks on Rue Garibaldi and the oppressive heat of a concrete city. As I mentioned St Medard last week whose feast day was celebrated yesterday on the 8th I could skip the weekly saint, but we would miss the opportunity to check in on Monday’s man, St Kevin. Kevin was quite a popular name when I was at school but faded in popularity as being seen as a bit nerdy and rarely name checked other than the perfect cousin of the Undertones. It is however very popular in France as a cool Anglicized name, it’s the French equivalent of Zachary. Yer man Kevin or Coemgen in Gaelic, was born in Ireland in 498. His name means fair begotten, and he was of noble birth, but in all honesty the sources for the history on Kev are sketchy at best. He went to a remote glen called Glendalough and led a life of fasting and praying as a hermit for seven years wearing only animal skins, sleeping on stones, and eating very sparingly. He is supposed to have slept in a small cave, which to this day is referred to as ‘St Kevin’s Bed’. His renown spread and he collected a bunch of other people around him while others came to seek his help and guidance. Glendalough grew into a renowned seminary of saints and scholars and the parent of several other monasteries, it latterly became one of the holy pilgrimage sites of Ireland, and they do like a good pilgrimage, especially if it’s only a county or so away. He is popularized in poems and a very odd song by the Dubliners, which recalls his drowning a woman who came to tempt him. So we have basically folklore and 2 sources from the late Middle Ages that no longer exist but were cited by the Bollandist Jesuits in the 17th century. Not letting facts get in the way of good story, Pope Pius X canonized Kevin in 1903. 

On the culinary front this week, we had an excellent dinner at Taggat in the 6th. It’s an odd bright semi-industrial chic space that is part of a hotel on Rue Vendome. The food was what could be lazily described as fusion, but in more simple terms it was a collation of French ingredients presented with a Japanese sensibility and some Japanese ingredients. I started with the Tuna tataki then had a great Octopus dish with carrot mousse and potatoes with wakame. The stone fruits have finally arrived in the markets, but we are in peak cherry and raspberry season for a couple of weeks, so I had the glorious cherry dessert. The wine list is well-chosen, deep on both Burgundy and the Loire, with a balance of prices and some high-end big names in its own section so as not to give the normal drinking public a nosebleed. We had a modest Muscadet, Gabbro ‘Clos des Bouquinardières’ 2020, I have a real soft spot for Melon de Bourgogne, and they are some of the best values on any wine list. 

Gones for good: Episode 17 Lake luster

We went to Chamonix last Monday, and it continued to rain, as it seems to have done since October of last year. If it rains on St Swithin’s Day, folklore has it that it will rain for the following 40 days. The origin of this tale is that St Swithin, the Bishop of Winchester, requested to be buried outside the Cathedral so the steps of his people and the rain would fall on his grave. When he was canonized in 971 they decided to bring his body inside the cathedral, on July 15th, when the transfer took place there was a massive storm, and it rained for days. A similar legend follows St Medard here in France, a jolly chap who was Bishop of Noyon and often depicted laughing, with his mouth wide open, and therefore he is invoked against toothache. He has the same rain prophesy but based around his feast day of June 8th: “Quand il pleut à la Saint-Médard, il pleut quarante jours plus tard”. Due to his supposed power over the rain, he was also invoked against bad weather, sterility and imprisonment. He is the patron saint of vineyards, brewers, captives and prisoners, the mentally ill, and peasants; the common factor being presumably all people needing rain, wanting to avoid working in the rain or rotting in a damp wet space. He is oddly referred to as St Merd in a couple of places, I will just leave that there.

The rain stopped briefly on the way back to Lyon, just as we looked for somewhere to have lunch in Annecy. It was my first visit to the bustling and popular city on the lake, and I understand now why the French make such a deal about it. The lake is massive, and the waters flushed from the winter snow seem to flow turquoise, and it nestles against wooded mountain peaks most of which are a natural park crisscrossed by trails and walking paths maintained by the city. Annecy itself is a modern conurbation of 5 towns of which Annecy and Vieux Annecy are the picturesque and the other 3 are just typical medium city regional France: lots of ugly apartment buildings, light industrial and retail zones around the main roads. Just to confuse matters, there is a part of Annecy called “La Vielle Ville” and that is where you should head. Its core is medieval, with canals and small alleys and car-free streets leading to the lakeshore and other parks dotted around it. The buildings are painted in pastels, with many half-timbered houses remaining from its glory years surrounding the old castle. There are a good number of art nouveau apartment buildings and hotels around its edges and leading towards the main lake.

It was only the last week of May, but it was rammed with tourists. Dressed schizophrenically due to the weather, some in shorts, some in rain slickers and hats, some about to hike, some dressed for formal lunch. It has good food. Michelin lists 48 restaurants in the 5 towns that make up greater Annecy. One 3 star, four 2 star, five 1 star and a full eight Bib Gourmand rated. To put that into context Annecy is the 42nd largest city in France with 240,000 population, Bordeaux at 6th with 1.3 million has 49 listed in Mich and less starred, Toulouse at 4th with 1.4 million has 37 rated in Michelin. Annecy likes its food for sure, and so we sought out the Fauborg Ste-Claire, a little old street tucked away through an arch which seems to be resto central. 

We struck out at Cozna but bounced 2 doors down to Le Bilboquet, where we enjoyed the business lunch set menu at €32. This type of well-executed seasonal lunch the French do superbly, an amuse-bouche of pea-soup, a salad of asparagus and a main course of slow cooked veal, mushrooms, spring bean and peas, sweet potato and caramelized black carrots. The room was what the French think of as modern chic, which is lots of grey wood tones, dark wood floor and tables, some commercial anonymous modern art in the same grey palate and the color highlight being that on each table one glass was in a bright orange glass. What they fail at in terms of interior design, they smash it out of the park foodwise. The rest of the clientele were all of an age where the lunch is not lunch without wine, but I was driving, and we had been drinking in Chamonix with friends, so we timidly stuck with mineral water. The dessert was a Savoie version of strawberry shortbread, which was fabulous. Lunch, coffee and service came to €68.50, amen for France!

Bourse de Travail

On Friday we went to see Beth Gibbons at the glorious art deco ‘Bourse du Travail’ which is a short walk from us in Place Guichard. The former ‘labour exchange’ as we would have referred to it growing up in England, or perhaps ‘hiring hall’ in the US, is now converted to an event space with adjunct offices for various NGOs and work agencies, it has a Rivera style 1930s mural homage to labor. We are still adjusting to French concert mores so we managed to miss Bill Ryder-Jones, the support, which was a bummer as I have his ‘Yawn’ album and loved it. The tickets do not mention any support, but I saw from her gig in Paris on Monday that he was support, the tickets said 8.00 pm which I assumed was ‘Doors 8.00PM’. We are used to a more chilled regime so were surprised when we rocked up at 8.40 we found out we had not only missed Bill they were getting ready for Beth and the stage was set with her band’s not insubstantial gear. The audience had the sweet if naive belief that if they start clapping, they will encourage the act to start. They tried that a couple of times without success but as 9.00 pm ticked by the smoke machines started and some background drones, then roadies delivering drinks to strategic spots finally heralded the arrival of the band, followed by a very relaxed Beth Gibbons. She has not released any solo material since the quasi hiatus of Portishead, other than a project with Paul Webb of Talk Talk fame under the Rustin Man moniker in 2002. Technically, Portishead is still a thing, but they pick their spots. 

This tour was to support her new album Lives Outgrown, she has a backing band of 7, and they played Zurich and Barcelona in the 4 days from Paris to Lyon, tomorrow she plays Berlin and then Copenhagen the next night, then Utrecht, Brussels and finishing off at the Barbican in London. The album is pastoral, more folk-rock than trip-hop for sure, it’s a bit one paced (slow) and downbeat if not actually depressing, lots of ‘shame’ in the lyrics. Happily, played live it was more uplifting, partly because the mix on the album has her incredible voice too low and live the instrumentation sounds more interesting. She mixed in two Rustin Man songs, the ‘hits’ from that album ‘Mysteries’ and the oddly poppy ‘Tom the Model’. The band is interesting as she definitely wants a more wooden sound, so as much as there is a drummer and keyboard player there are two guitarists and two violinists, with one also happy to shred guitar. There was also Howard Jacobs, a man-bunned master of many trades playing: (checks list) Contrabass Clarinet, Vibraphone, Timpani, Baritone Sax, Flute, Bombo, a saw, Bodhrán, Metal and Gongs, Recorder, Hammered Guitar and odd bits of shaky stuff. Beth has been doing this long enough to know what she wants and what she doesn’t want is a spotlight, so she is at best back-lit but generally bathed in a variety of mood lights with the band. In contrast to the last few gigs I saw in the US it is still seen as poor form here to spend the concert recording every fecking song on your phone, people can sneak an odd photo in, but it was pleasant to see the audience enjoy the show with their own eyes rather than looking at their phones. She does not say a word until a shy “Merci beacoup et bon nuit” as the lights come up after barely 55 minutes. The well-behaved Lyon audience hooped and hollered, and they came on for an encore. The lights bathing the stage were in Portishead blue and as she sang “Ohh, can’t anybody see” the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and that pure voice held the whole audience spellbound through ‘Roads’. She finished with probably the most uplifting and uptempo song from the new album, ‘Reaching Out’. The audience stamped and cheered, but the house lights were up and Beth and the band waved hearty farewells from the stage, and we snuck out into the rain sprinkled streets of Part-Dieu.

Gones for good: Episode 16 Rhubarb and constants

Lyon suffered a double blow to the sporting stomach on Saturday night, both Olympic Lyonnais teams lost in finals. Both were plying their trade away from home and both were up against the most formidable foes, their respective bête-noires, Barcelona for ‘les Fenottes’, PSG for ‘les Gones’. The women’s football team is way is more successful than their male compatriots, serial winners, the beast that ate everything, eight Champions Leagues including a record five successive titles from 2016 to 2020, fourteen consecutive French league titles from 2007 to 2020. They have also won five trebles, the most for any team. Barca, featuring several of the key women figures in the awful Spanish FA mess around the Women’s World Cup win, just proved too strong for them. The men are a shadow of the success that the women’s team are. They skirted with relegation, went through 3 managers and the squad faced the ignominy of being gathered together and scolded publicly through a megaphone by the leader of the local hardcore fans or “Ultras”, as they are dubbed. English football fans know some of the men’s team as they were once stars in the Premier League. Alexandre Lacazzete and Ainsley Maitland-Niles formerly of Arsenal, Nemanja Matic of Chelsea and Man U fame, Said Benrama of West Ham and Dejan Lovren of Liverpool; all players who for the most part, without being disrespectful, their glory days are behind them. The club of OL is owned by Eagle Sports Group, the frontman of which is John Textor. Textor is an interesting chap, he is one of the sprawling DuPont family heirs and spent his early life as a pro freestyle skateboarder until he had a serious head injury and decided to focus on technology and making money. He has successfully built up a fortune in snowboarding, special effects, (his business won the Oscar for the backwards aging of Benjamin Button), digital media, (he started and ran Fubo-TV), and he was responsible for the virtual Tupac at Coachella. He bought Crystal Palace, hence the Eagles as well as OL, an odd Belgian second division club and what sounds like an insult but is actually a Brazilian football club, Botafogo.

It’s interesting to watch the money flow into European football, some of it is smart money and some of it is not. American entrepreneurs, moguls and general wealth-hoarders, billionaires and investment funds own 9 of the 20 Premier League teams as well as five of the French Ligue 1: OL, Marseilles, Le Havre, Strasbourg and Toulouse. They also own 5 of the Serie A teams in Italy including both the Milan teams, Roma, Fiorentina, Atalanta, the recently crowned Europa League winners from Bologna and Genoa. Other than Steve Kerr of Warriors’ fame and Steve Nash’s group owning Mallorca the Spanish La Liga and German Budesliga have avoided the influx as they have strict fan ownership requirements. The leagues have no guaranteed incomes like the US Major Leagues so making money is less easy than some of the investors who do own franchises, like Todd Boehly of LA Dodgers and Chelsea, would like. He famously was justifying his new shiny purchase to journalists and his approach of paying fortunes for amassing the future stars of 5 years’ time when he was asked a question of how would they be able to afford these expenses if they were doing so badly, as they were at the time. He reassured the gathered audience that the Champions League revenues would cover the new expense levels, they then pointed out to him that lying 12th in the Premier meant that Chelsea would not, and indeed did not, qualify for the money spinning Champions League, as they had previously done every prior year. He checked with one of his bag carriers and was assured yes that was correct, to which he remarked “I did not know that”. 

From one shining example of failing upwards to another, finally Great Britain was put out of its misery and Rishi Sunak or as John Crace so perfectly puts it ‘Rish!’ called a general election. Unlike the US with its fixed election calendar, the UK has a moveable feast, only time-barred by a limit which could have kept the kleptocracy that has been the Tory government, in charge until the end of the year. Rish! felt that this was his moment to seize, partly because they finally had a bit of good news on the inflation number which was one of his previously stated 6 fixed deliverables that would demonstrate how he was a serious, if somewhat tiny, politician, in contrast to Truss and Johnson who were larger but not serious. The fact that he failed to deliver on any of them in the time span he set himself and to date had only that one glimmer maybe he thought it was now or never. He demonstrated very clearly the ineptitude of his administration as he exited 10 Downing Street to make the public announcement in torrential rain. No-one had looked at the weather forecast, or even looked out the window, thought of holding an umbrella or god forbid, have an awning erected over the podium. Maybe its the Tories publicly stated dislike for ‘experts’ which now includes the weatherman? The little man stands in his shiny, now soaking-wet suit addressing the press to make the most important statement of his term in office and he is drowned out by a troll playing Blair’s Labor Party celebration song from 1997 “Things Can Only Get Better” on a boombox. His campaign has been a comedic treat in the 5 days since, highlighting his total inability to relate and be relatable. Throwing any thought of his carbon impact out of the limousine tinted window he has private jetted around England and Ireland from one disaster to another; the factory visit with the 3 stooges from local Tory office pretending to be employees asking soft ball questions, the teetotalling Rish! asking the Welsh brewery staff how they were looking forward to the Euros football championships not knowing Wales had been knocked out and planning a stop at the Titanic museum and being surprised at the analogies being made. It was such a resounding success that they cancelled all events for Saturday and he and his crack media team are now planning a reset, after a solid 3 days.

On Tuesday the baker’s shop informed us it was St Constantine’s Day. Constantine, unlike Rish! was a consummate politician and a pretty good general. Born in what is modern Serbia to his father, a Roman general Constantius and an inn-keeper’s daughter in 272. Now I hear you saying, a man of the people, Mum being familiar with the hospitality trade and handy at pulling pints. You will be surprised to know that Helen, his mother was a star in her own right and is also celebrated on the 21st of May. She also goes by ‘Empress Helen, Equal to the Apostles’, which is a bit of mouthful but she appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of England as supposedly a British King Coel’s daughter and is credited with finding the relics of the cross of Christ and not only that she also finds the remains of the Three Wise Men which currently reside in the Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral. So regardless of not having access to a private jet she managed to get around. As did Constantine, his father becomes Caeser in 305 succeeding Augustus Maximus but he dies a year later in York. Constantine manages to get to the deathbed, again no small feat on horeseback and is appointed Emperor by his father’s men. For the next 20 years he fights his way to supreme power in the West and finally as overall Emperor. He is responsible for the formal adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire. The myth is that this is as a result of an omen — a “chi-rho”, the Greek letter of P on top of an X in the sky, with the inscription “By this sign shalt thou conquer” — before his victory in the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, when Constantine cemented his power as Emperor of the West. He is said to have instituted the new symbol as a battle standard standard, called the labarum, other sources say he told his soldiers to paint it on their shields. All the sources are actually written later, so there is a sense of some hagiography occurring. The venerable document called the “Donation of Constantine” was attributed to proving the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity for centuries, but in the 15th century it was discovered to be a forgery. It is now assumed that he was politically shrewd and the decriminalization of Christianity was smart business rather than he was desperate to proselytize, in fact to keep the Army on board he allowed them to continue all the traditional pagan practices that were thought to bring good luck in battle. He becomes Emperor through a relatively long civil war so it was hardly smooth sailing, his private life was complicated too. Constantine’s wife attempted to seduce Constantine’s son (her step-son) and when he refused her advances, she accused him of raping her. The penalty for doing this to an Empress was death, as was any act considered to be treason. So firstly he has his son killed and then when he finds out the truth he has her killed too. He is to this day venerated by the Orthodox church, not the least for his creation of the New Rome in Byzantium, which later was named after him as Constantinople, modern Istanbul. As Rome waned, it subsequently became the capital for more than a thousand years of the Holy Roman Empire.

We had visitors from out of town this week, so have been happy to show them Lyon and its numerous treats. We took them to a Bouchon, as it is part of the tradition of Lyonnais cuisine, where the ‘Mères de Lyon’, the formidable women chefs first plied their trade. These were household cooks who had worked for the bourgeoisie; during the period just before and after the First World War the mass move away from domestic staff left them without work so they started the informal restaurants called Bouchons, serving primarily the workers. Daniel et Denise Crequi (there is another in St Jean in the old town) is usually our go to and it does not disappoint. We carefully guided our friend to avoid the andouillette and instead went for the ‘Quenelle de Brochet’ which is served about the size of a child’s American football, swimming in nantua sauce. 

Quenelle de Brochet

For something more modern we went to try Siprès just off Rue de l’Université in Place Prado. It recently got a Bib Gourmand mention by Michelin and deserves the accolades. Its a smallish ‘Canut’ style space with exposed stone walls and yet bright and airy as it has windows on two walls. The food is modernist farm to table fare, we had cod in a sweet tamarind glaze, sweet potatoes and black garlic and a great duck dish with spelt, miso carrots and pickled redcurrants. We finished with a lovely concoction of rhubarb with pink peppers, tonka beans and maple syrup. Dinner was €39 for three courses and the wine by the ‘pot’ was cheap and cheery. I cannot recommend it highly enough, great food and friendly people; they had English language menus for the faint of heart too.

Gones for good: Episode 15 Cold Comfort

The return of the non-native passed without drama. I flew from a rainy Kennedy overnight to a rainy Heathrow, changed planes and flew to a rainy Paris. I hung around a bit waiting in ‘Paul’ for my train to a rainy Lyon, but with the help of the Metro got to within a 50-meter dash to home with the wheels on my bag leaving a spray in my trail. I always bring back something that is tougher to find here than a well-stocked Whole Foods, so tucked away in my running shoes were sundry chilies, shelled cardamom seeds as well as Rachel’s favorite Peet’s Coffee hidden away for a birthday surprise. I have given up buying duty-free booze. I used to return with a liter of some expensive gin but have cupboards full of them now as we just don’t drink as much gin as I think we do when I am confronted by the wall of gins in Heathrow. My Mum and Dad drank Gordon’s London Gin, in the traditional green glass bottle. I have discovered that as much as most Dutch gin is undrinkable, the arguable home of Jenever, or gin as we corrupted it to, does produce my favorite, Bobby’s Gin from Rotterdam. Bobby’s, Campari and Antica Formula makes hands down the best Negroni. 

It’s always great coming home to France, and doubly so when returning from the US. All the small touches, nuances and peculiarities of the ‘hexagon’ reinforce the prejudices and odd pride in having made the decision to live here rather than there. Cars do not dominate life here as they so evidently do there, there are less of them, they are small, lumpen and functional in Lyon. In the US they seem gigantic, distorted, almost steroidal. People walk and bike here. Sure, people walk in New York, but only the crazy and bike delivery guys lumbering along with insulated saddlebags and handle guards ride bikes. The traffic is ridiculous at all hours of the day, the turn right on a light habit is a killer, and you would have to carry a lock and chain the size of a small child to ensure if you parked it, that upon your return it would still be there. France has poverty, class oppression and racism. It is not defined by it, though, and arguably makes considerable efforts to address those modern societal blights. The US has a visible and obvious problem in that there are lots of places to buy shiny things and places to eat copious amounts of food but the people doing the shopping and eating are rich, predominantly old, white or Asian and the people running around doing everything else, everything else, are from minorities and predominantly from Latin America. There are homeless here in Lyon, camping under semi-vacant local government buildings awaiting redevelopment. But the sheer volume of people living on the streets in the US, living in their cars, living from addiction to fix, their lives spilling on to the ground from suitcases and shopping trolleys is deafening. People are not happy, not in the simple hanging out, going about their day-to-day life, way of being happy. The impression you get is one of desperation, desperate to please, desperate to get ahead, desperate to get through their shift, desperate not to fuck up.

So ambling around Lyon, strolling over to the Sunday market to buy fruit and veg for the week ahead was cathartic. Just seeing families, old folks, the young and hip, the ungainly, the sleek, the full panoply of the French, mixing together without an obvious stratification of the server and the served, nor the desperate need to please, enjoying an unspoken Gallic mutual respect is like taking an emotional shower. I washed off the stench of Mammon by lining up to buy the new season strawberries. I cooked for us, we had some wine, had some hugs, ate some cheese and I felt home.

It became apparent that I had also brought home something else from my travels. By Monday evening Rachel was feeling under the weather and by the following afternoon my abject denial through the act of running through the rain was not working, I had a cold. Here we are, 6 days later and we both still have it and vast amounts of vitamin C, zinc and Wellness Formula have failed to put much of a dent in it. Maybe it’s the combination of travel, the exposure to all sorts of cooties from trains, planes and automobiles and the spring pollen explosions resulted in this malaise. Thursday the 16th was Rachel’s birthday, and we were planning a fun day, but being fully enrheumé, things were low-key. The 16th is also as it happens the feast day of St Honoré. A fitting saint to see their name on the wall of the baker’s as St Honoré is the patron saint of bakers. Honoratus of Amiens was his given name, and he was Bishop of Amiens in Picardy from 564 to 600. Modern sources are sniffy about the origin story as its only source is from a 12th century book called the ‘Lives of Saints’ and it’s all very exciting, lots of miracles and stuff, so seen now as being a bit hagiographic. Anyway, if we take the official line at face value, Honoré was born to a well-to-do family in Ponthieu and being a pious young lad was sent to study with the local Bishop of Amiens, who was called Beat. Sadly he does not seem to have left any poems or verse so he cannot claim to be the first of the Beat Poets, but he liked the young Honoré, who was said to enjoy nothing more than praying and fasting. Upon Beat’s death in 564 the clergy and people put him forward as his successor, but he pulled the ‘we are not worthy’ defense. However, someone upstairs had other plans so he was struck by a celestial beam to the forehead and from the impact point mysterious amounts of special oil sprang forth, which as everyone knows is the last stage of the Bishopric job interview, and he passed it successfully. His wet nurse refused to believe that her former charge was now Bish, and said if that was the truth, then the baker’s peel that she was using in the oven should sprout leaves. It did, and so she planted the burning oven shovel in the courtyard, which grew Jack and Magic Beanstalk-like into a mulberry tree bearing leaves and fruit. In the 11th century, his fame spread to Paris and a baker, named Renold Théreins, gave nine acres of land for the construction of a chapel in honor of Saint Honoré and he became patron saint of millers, flour merchants, bakers and pastry chefs. He also gave his name to a pastry, the Saint-honoré which I have to admit I have not yet tried. The road to the chapel is the chic and renowned Fauborg St Honoré.

Whilst I have been fighting off the worst effects of this most persistent of colds, I have tried to cook hearty and healthy food and did a marvelous stew inspired by Mark Bittman’s Beef Stew with Prunes. Using quasi de veau instead of beef and dates instead of prunes. It’s a great recipe for a slow day, it combines some sugar and the dried fruit and a final addition of vinegar to give a gorgeous agrodulce effect. The weather brightened up finally Friday and in a desperate effort to bring some spring atmosphere I fancied doing a take on salad nicoise as the haricot beans are just coming in to season. I managed to secure some glorious Mediterranean Tuna from the fish guy and the local grocery store is selling home brined olives, so with the sweet small Ratte potatoes and some fresh farm eggs we were good to go. I ground a cleaned salted anchovy with garlic, added some shallot marinated in Sherry Vinegar, Dijon mustard and some good olive oil, I sweetened it with Gratte Cul jam. It’s actually Rose-Hip jam but the French call it ‘Arse scratcher’ for some reason, don’t ask!

Gones for good: Episode 14 Netting Brooklyn

I started the week a long way from Lyon. I was in good company, though. I was at an event with 900 portable storage aficionados at their annual conference and exhibition at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. This is what it says on the can and is about the size of a small city on the banks of the Potomac, nominally outside Washington, DC. Our fellow guests were Volunteers of America and The Light of the World. I fondly remembered the Jefferson Airplane sang, “All the people I meet, got a revolution, we are volunteers of America.” Only after standing in front of the sign listing the various NGOs and charities that make up Volunteers of America did it finally dawn on me that it was indeed more than just a lyric. The Light of the World is an evangelical church who held two days of their Church of Living God services in adjacent exhibition halls, one in Spanish and one in English. All the 3000–4000 attendees hailed from Central America and arrived as if dressed for a wedding, or church. Every man and boy wore a suit and every woman a long dress, and most women’s heads were covered with shawls. As I moved from one session to another at the exhibition I was attending, the constant background noise was loud, plaintive exhortations in English and Spanish to do some more praying, honoring or celebrating celestial deities. In our conference, we were honoring and celebrating much more mundane things, including the keynote speaker Brett Baier, the host of Fox News’ ‘Special Report’. He tried to reassure us that he is from the News side of the house of Fox, not the crazy Opinion side, but he undermined his credibility slightly when he still managed to slip in the company lines about the crime wave and immigration being the greatest challenges the current administration is failing to address. However, from the comments and questions from the audience, he was playing to his people generally, and they agree with him. Whether that is because they have studied the data and made that conclusion themselves or that Fox News has been telling them that this is the case, relentlessly, every day since Grampa Biden was elected, I am not 100% sure, but I know where the smart money would be betting.

We ate in a variety of restaurants along the waterfront at National Harbor, in principle a complete new town built over the last 16 years with hotels and a large MGM casino. As you can imagine, what it lacks in taste or good design, it makes up for in sheer volume of places to eat bad food and shop for expensive branded goods imported from China. As we arrived, we were informed that there was a three-day emergency ‘Juvenile Curfew’ for the weekend from 6pm to 6am. I mistakenly thought this was some overzealous local overreach to prevent the Pro-Palestine protests upsetting the conventioneers; it was however an effort to prevent local teenagers from less affluent communities doing rampaging, shoplifting raids and upsetting the rich shoppers. So as we walked to the restaurants, we had enough police presence to protect a United Nations meeting.

The compensation for putting up with four days of corporate food and terrible wine was three days in Brooklyn with my daughter, her partner and a hair-shedding device hidden in a very sweet dog called Tallulah. For those who have not visited Brooklyn, it is a large part of eastern New York City, characterized by large Reddy-brown brick (brownstone) houses with wide tree-lined sidewalks. It is populated by the young and affluent, who like the more open spaces, larger apartments and, in a symbiotic response to their presence, its many places to eat, drink and be merry. It has Metro connections to Manhattan and other boroughs. Urban and large, it has a population of 2.7 million people spread over an area of 180 square kilometers. By contrast, Lyon has 1.4 million over 1,140 km2. It is less grubby, low-rise and graffitied than the neighboring Queens, less Bonfire of the Vanities than Soho and the lower end of Manhattan. We went to a comedy night at a Japanese restaurant/club/sake shop, ‘The Rule of Thirds’, which in itself is quintessentially Brooklyn, and all of the acts took the piss out of the locals as being rich, privileged and overtly hipster. The comedy was great, and I laughed at all the jokes, including stuff that I was told I probably should have not, but that comes from being the oldest member of the audience by 30 years. The stand-out act was a Norwegian guy, Daniel Simonsen, who you should check out. The agreed targets were the locals, group autism and the tech industry.

If I am in the US, I take advantage of the good food that is as easy to find in any major city as it is difficult to find in France, i.e. Mexican or Asian food. This trip was no exception, with Japanese steak and deconstructed nettle pesto at Rule of Thirds, Cantonese updated Salt and Pepper Chicken at Pot Luck Club, and Oaxacan breakfast gorditas from For All Things Good, being just some of the treats to tickle my pickle. As I struggle with American wine I drank some great beer, including a Young Master Hong Kong Pale Ale, and a Kagua Blanc White Ale from Belgium. My beef with Californian wine, in particular, is that for the most part it is caught in the climate trap of growing grapes that have flourished in the Old World and are more suited for the much cooler climate there. The basic result is too much sugar, which results in too much alcohol. The other thing that annoys the crap out of me is that having higher alcohol is not an excuse to charge more, in fact they should charge less, but that’s not the way the US wine industry works. At one of the dinners I did for work, someone chose probably the worst possible wine to have at a fish restaurant, an Orin Swift red blend, Abstract. It tasted like an abstraction of a Mexican coke, but one with 15.4% ABV.

Talking about abstraction, I was treated to tickets to a gig to see an abstract jazz-rock experimental artist called L’Rain. I had originally planned to see Julia Jacklin, but despite pre-sale notification and much discussion, someone forgot to get tickets for the night before I flew home. As a Hail Mary the previous day, that same person DM’ed her Insta account and asked Julia for tickets. We were just leaving the Pot Luck Club, which is just around the corner from Bowery Ballroom, when said person decided to post something on her Insta. Imagine her and our surprise when it transpired at 5.00 pm earlier that evening that Julia had replied to her to say, “Sorry it’s late notice but if you still want the tix let me know”. It was now 30 minutes after Julia’s show started, and we were in the Bowery and not in Brooklyn, where Ms. Jacklin was playing. So, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we went off to see L’Rain.

She had a merch desk selling stuff and one was a cool T-shirt saying: “I Can’t Stand L’Rain”, cute and very Ann Peebles. I have listened to a lot of noise rock and jazz fusion, from Mogwai, Metheny, Mandy, Indiana or Matmos, so arguably I have a high tolerance for atonal rhythms. After the fifth meandering shitfest of self-indulgence, where the three of us ended up standing with our fingers in our ears praying for the ‘song’ to end, I suggested it was time to go. I really wanted to buy one of those T-shirts as I really cannot stand L’Rain.

Gones for good: Episode 12 – Dear Dairy

For those who may have noticed, I have a passion for cheese, a ‘Cleese in the Cheeseshop’ sketch long-list fascination with all matters to do with the fermented curd. I read somewhere that in fact they mention 43 cheeses in that sketch, and to this day I can probably recite all of them. I will assume, dear reader, that you are familiar with this staple of the Monty Python cannon, but for those who have been locked in a time vault since the 1940’s and are only now catching up, here is the original TV show version. The origin of the sketch is worth retelling. John Cleese was seasick while filming on the south coast, on the drive back to London Graham Chapman suggested he eat something to feel better; Cleese replied that he fancied a piece of cheese. Upon seeing a chemist’s (a pharmacy for those on the left bank of the Atlantic), Cleese wondered aloud whether the shop would sell cheese, to which Graham responded that if they did, it would be medicinal cheese and that he would need a prescription to buy some. Based on this insight, they decided to write a sketch based on this conceit. However, once they started writing it, they concluded asking for cheese in a chemist’s shop was too unrealistic without requiring an elaborate set up. So instead of someone attempting to buy cheese somewhere other than a cheese shop, Cleese thought that they should write a sketch about someone attempting to buy cheese in a cheese shop that had no cheese whatsoever, so they did. John did not initially find it funny. When Chapman insisted that it was funny, they presented it at a reading for the other Python members, who also thought it didn’t work, except for Michael Palin, who collapsed with laughter. So they persevered, the bouzouki players and dancing bankers were added, and the rest is history.

What has kept me from consuming too much cheese was the whole health impact around dairy produce in general. I drink skimmed milk and have for years to the point where even semi-skimmed, demi écremé or 2% milk in my tea tastes like I have added a dollop of cream. I switched to oat milk for cereal and coffee. The health concerns about dairy and specifically dairy fats became such a common understanding that they have been accepted without question and have brought forward a whole industry of vegetable alternatives and margarine catering to the avoidance of the dangers of dairy products. My first job out of college was working for the kings of trans fatty acids, Unilever. My parents under the same misguided instructions from the media and medical establishment switched from butter to some chemically enabled stabilization of mixed vegetable oils, branded and marketed as healthful, weight management enabling and smart choices: “Flora”, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” and Olivio. It now seems that the actual evidence behind the health advice that we have all been blindly following was not as robust as originally trumpeted, in fact “….sparse and few data for the effects of dairy consumption on health are available”. Au contraire, of late, there has been extensive and serious research on the long term impacts of choices in the diet, in terms of following large groups of people over long periods of time. The result of these studies have shown that not only is dairy produce not bad for the long term health outcomes but in fact the converse, consumption of dairy is actually beneficial.

In a study published in the Lancet for example, called Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology or PURE, the researchers followed 136,000 adults from 21 countries for nine years. They found that, during the study period, those who consumed two or more servings of dairy per day were 22 percent less likely to develop cardiovascular disease and 17 percent less likely to die than those who consumed no dairy at all. Notably, those who consumed higher levels of saturated fat from dairy were not more likely to develop heart disease or die. Another one, from 16 studies involving more than 63,000 adults, found that, across an average of nine years, those who had higher levels of dairy fats in their blood were 29 percent less likely than those with lower levels to develop Type 2 diabetes. So in fact there seems to be a benefit to consuming dairy fat rather than avoiding it. As soon as I read that, I was relieved, happy that my cheese obsessions were now part of a healthy lifestyle, but I was saddened that so many people have been confused and misinformed. That they have been actively encouraged to avoid foods that now they believe are beneficial. Milk fat, it transpires, is naturally packaged in a unique structure called the milk fat globule membrane, which they now think can help bind cholesterol in the digestive tract, as well as the fermented dairy choices like yogurt and cheese containing microbes which are good for gut heath and vitamin K, which is good for the heart. The crap we were told to replace it with made a lot of people money, but trans-fats and all the other binders and fillers needed to make vegetable oil look like butter or fat-free cheese actually does and will kill you.

Anyway, now that is behind us, we can concentrate, as the French have always done, on good butter, yogurt, milk and cheese, together with the myriad other products that you will find in the dairy aisle here but are unknown in the US or UK: faisselles, fromage blanc, fromage frais, calin, petits Suisses. I immediately went out to our local cheese shop in Lyon, Pierre et Marcellin on Felix Faure to indulge my new-found healthy life choices, luckily it was free of bouzouki and other manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse. Some Mont Vully, Epoisse and St Timothé in hand, mission accomplished. It’s not difficult as Lyon is well served with specialist cheese shops plus most supermarkets and grocers have a reasonable selection, cut to choice, not just pre-packaged and trapped in plastic.

For my weekly saintly exploration the obvious choice was Tuesday with St George however that is a reasonably well known story, no spoilers, but he is neither English not originally had anything to do with dragon slaying. Thursday the 25th was St Marc’s day, but that is complicated as Mark the Evangelist, as he is known in the protestant lands, is firstly a major hitter, which hardly fits my desire to shine a light on some of the odd saints who are feted each day in our local bakers. Most people will have heard of him, he is the Chelsea of saints, popular with the wrong type, a bit gauche and like the mess that is the boys from Walham Green, he has some dirty laundry in his meteoric rise to the big leagues. No Russian oligarch or bumbling American hedge fund yokels, rather that is it commonly acknowledged that he didn’t actually write his eponymous gospel. Not only that, but it seems that the majority of his popular life story details are actually filched from another Mark, the interestingly dubbed “Cousin of Barabas” or John Mark. Maybe this is the origin story of the expression “to be wide of the mark”?

We braved the torrential rains that have engulfed most of Northern Europe to go to the farmer’s market at Place St Louis in the 7th arrondissement of Lyon. It is the typical market with a majority of stalls selling fruit and vegetables, some are actual farmers, some are more classic green-grocers who buy their produce at the wholesale market. Some are specialists, there is for example one guy who sells predominantly Italian citrus; Sicilian lemons, blood oranges (which are confusingly sold in France by their varietal name more often than not, so you will see Moro, Maltaise or Sanguinello) and occasionally in season bergamots. The fish stall is excellent and the two brothers who run it always have a smile, even in today’s monsoon, often they check with me what the English word for the variety of fish that I am buying. We had an odd exchange due to the confusion over Monkfish, which they misheard as Monkeyfish so I was desperately explaining that is what was not a poisson de singe, but indeed a poisson des moines. There is an awesome poultry butcher, they farm about 50 minutes outside of Lyon and draw the crowds by having a rotisserie with glistening, golden, fat-dripping chickens rotating and scenting the air. The other end of the stall is the greatest variety of poultry cuts, roasts, legs, thighs, sausages, patés imaginable, and of course eggs. The delight that is a paupiette, is one of their specialities. A small parcel of joy encased in a boned, flattened leg of chicken, guinea fowl or turkey; the middle will be chopped meat and flavoring – mushrooms, peppers, herbs and the French chile of choice, piment d’espelette. There is a cake and bread stall who also sell great pies and tarts, all baked in their wood burning oven so that their crust has that flaky crispness that is tough to get from a traditional electric or gas oven. There is a good cheese stall with an excellent separate section just to contain their selection of goat cheeses and a butcher’s van with more traditional sausages, offal and cold cuts. In summer there are seasonal vendors with honey, baked goods, re-caning of wicker furniture and that staple of French markets, the guys selling mattresses. Luckily, as it is mainly locals rather than tourists we miss the rip-offs like the Pyrenees cheese guys, proffering free tastes and selling their large wheels of Brebis at the very reasonable price of €45 a kilo, which you can get from the supermarket for half the price. If someone is giving food away there is usually a compensatory mechanism, beware men bearing sun dried tomato hummus samples!

Gones for good: Episode 11 Disquaires, drugs and discoveries

Lyon made an unscheduled and unflattering appearance on France 2 a few weeks ago. France 2’s news programming is the most watched, like BBC’s or NBC’s nightly news, it is more generally watched than other populist or entertainment-focused options. They have a serious approach to the news, slightly undercut by the female news anchors still tottering around in 5-inch heels; they may be occasionally allowed to be in jeans to show they are not overly buttoned up, but the jeans are ferociously tailored, and the heels are sharp. The men always and without exception appear in blue suits, white shirts and often with blue ties. The royal blue suit, a fashion item not seen in the anglophone world since the 80’s, regularly makes an appearance. Lyon’s appearance was on a 45-minute special ‘exposé’ featuring an undercover examination of the urban drug trafficking in one of Lyon’s suburbs, the Tonkin public housing complex in Villeurbanne. The hidden cameras were concealed among the efforts of a group of citizens who formed a collective effort called Tonkin-Paix-able, looking to ensure a peaceful Tonkin. The group rock up regularly in the middle of the major drug exchange with white t-shirts, rubber gloves and trash bags and ostensibly remove the detritus of the marketplace, ironically less used needles and more fast food packaging and beer cans thrown down by the dealers as they sit, hoodied and bored, on make-shift cardboard seats on the steps of the large public building opposite the tram stop. The collective tries to engage with the dealers to keep things as civilized as possible for the neighbourhood.

The story is common across France, not just the large banlieues that ring the major cities. Banlieue means suburb in a strictly etymological sense, but in France it is more synonymous with what Americans refer to as ‘the projects’. Public housing is a key part of the French social contract. The majority of French people rent rather than own houses and long term rental contracts, ample legal protections for tenants and local government rent controls mean it’s a simple long term choice for many working class people in the large towns and cities. Much of the rental housing is state owned, usually by the local council, some are private or charity but most is truly public housing. Through a natural process of selection recent immigrants get concentrated into the less well positioned cités, as in the movie images of ‘les banlieues’ in Marseilles or the Paris suburbs, isolated for many years without access to good public transport. In these areas, poverty and lack of opportunity follow declining standards in the schools and those who can do, move away, further concentrating the young poorly educated boys, not really men, into a process of boredom and finally relief through working for drug trading gangs. Selling ‘stups’ as in ‘stupifiants’, is a way and for many the only way for kids to make a living, other than riding scooters and bikes delivering food to the richer areas. The biggest trade is in weed or hash, with coke and crack some way behind. It’s a cash business and profits flow upwards, so at the sharp end the kids are not covered in gold chains, nor driving Mercedes SUVs in some wannabe rap video lifestyle. They all wear the same drab outfit, black Adidas jog pants, black Nike ‘baskets’, black zip hoodie, black baseball-cap and the one sign of affected affluence, a faux Gucci man-bag strapped across the chest.

France still gets shocked when the turf wars escalate into deadly violence, and even a single death will usually make the nightly news. Macron, in one of his studied efforts to deprive the far right of its rallying points, recently dropped into one of the major banlieues of Marseilles, La Castellane. On camera, he told residents that his newly announced campaign will “try to destroy the networks and the traffickers.” Macron said 82 people have already been detained, with 60 of them remanded in custody for further questioning. “Drug trafficking is a growing scourge” and “the situation is very difficult” in Marseille and other cities, he said, adding France was in the throes of a “battle” against the dealers. One of the ‘difficulties’ is that if the dealers are under 16, and most are, they cannot usually be arrested. The other glaring problem is the obvious demand for weed and an almost blind denial of the simplest thing to do would be to regulate the sale and take the clandestine market public. The wine lobby is dead set against legalizing weed as it watches Gen Z drink more IPA than vin de table. The French are happy to regulate the crap out of tobacco and vapes, but not marijuana. Go in a tabac today, and you are confronted by pack after pack of cigarettes with no visible branding and statutory stipulated 2.3rds of the packaging displaying pictures of cancers and post-mortem lungs. There was a story this week, continuing the theme of the “national effort” to save the tabacs. With some 23,300 shops across France, 41 percent of which are located in towns with fewer than 3,500 inhabitants, tabacs are an important part of French life, even for non-smokers. We regularly get parcels delivered to our local tabac as it’s often the free or cheaper option. This week’s new effort was paying the expanding no-touch automatic freeway toll charging. Last Fall, it was them selling ammunition for hunters. Why not allow them to sell weed? Solve all the small town angst and big city crime in one joint.

Saturday was the saint’s day of independent record stores, Disquaire Day or Record Store Day. Fuelled by special one off releases or collector’s items in the making, April 20th is a celebration of small and large record shops and Lyon is blessed with lots of them, most within walking distance spread around the narrow streets at the foot of les Pentes de Croix Rousse, a short walk from the Hotel De Ville. We made our way through the weekly pro-Palestine rally and the now regularly red stained fountains symbolizing the daily death in Gaza to my favorite, Sofa Records. They have an insane collection of West African and Hi-Life music and always something intriguing playing. They have good rock and pop stocks as well, and the shelves are well organized and easy to browse. Maybe it is completely unlikely that I would find a real gem of a discovery as those are now only found in charity shops, but it’s still a pleasurable way to while away some time. There was an interesting article in last Friday’s Grauniad about record collecting, ahead of RSD. In the UK even the charity shops have worked out that a quick look on Discogs will turn a €4 bargain into a €25 special display.

I didn’t need a Rumours picture disk or a “réédition splatter” of Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’, so my shopping was less focused on the ‘special RSD releases’. I found the following treats: 

“Lets Make Up and Be Friends” – The Bonzo Dog Band’s last album before Stanshall’s death (but featuring the first appearance of Sir Henry Rawlinson).

“TANGK” – Idles – independent record store version, new album from the best men in dresses.

“Desolation Boulevard” – The Sweet. The vainglorious effort by the Ballroom Blitzers to shake off their Glam-Pop reputation with a hard rock record.

“Flock” – Jane Weaver – a bargain pink vinyl version of her 2021 album which features vibes and who can resist a good vibraphone sound.

“Actual Life” – fred again – The first of the ‘Life’ trilogy, silver vinyl.

“Pretty Hate Machine” – Nine Inch Nails. A gift for Rachel, who is currently inspired by Reznor and tough to find on vinyl.

“Live Montreal 1971” – Frank Zappa. A semi-official bootleg from a radio broadcast. Its the ‘vaudeville’ band with Flo and Eddie on vocals, so all Fillmore 71 favorites plus one of the songs from the eponymous Phlorescent Leach and Eddie album from 72, which I have never seen on any official release.

If you would like to sample these treats, listen here.

After a week in the mountains living on cheese and ham, it was good to get back to proper nosh. Friday night we went back to Armada on Rue de Boeuf in the old town. The first time we went there was by coincidence when they publicly made Le Fooding Guide, so it was interesting to see how they had adapted to their new fame in the intervening couple of months. They are still super friendly and faithful to the original vision of fun food. A modest space, sharing plates but not twee, tiny portions that you end up ordering 3–4 dishes a head. All very very good, the veggie driven starters were spring encapsulated, which was welcome after the winter of Tuesday and Wednesday in the shadow of Mont Blanc. Next door is Antic Wine, so they occasionally have specials from the neighboring cellar, and we had an amazing 2013 Montlouis followed by a 2011 St Amour. Some Loire whites are known to age and Chenin is a good grape to do that but a 13-year-old Cru Beaujolais is not common outside of Morgon, so we were blown away how good this was. The best dish of the evening was a lamb spring festival on a server, lamb from the Ardeche 3 ways, the fatty belly end grilled, the main rump chop served ruddy and the sweet breads done quickly on the griddle. All served over peas, pea pods and asparagus. The chef proudly delivered the two deserts and happy to chat about what made them special to him and ultimately to us. Among a ton of tourist traps, the modern Francis Drake would be happy to stumble into this Armada.

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Gones for good: Episode 10 – Fishheads and tales

Salmon is great to eat, but less impressive as a color for pants. You can farm salmon in large lakes, lochs and open sea-pens, so from the perspective of sustainability you would think it would get a hefty thumbs up. Especially as we are supposed to eat oily fish, reduce meat consumption and support a sustainable protein source with no methane emissions. In the US, partly thanks to the ubiquity of farmed salmon in sushi, the annual consumption per head is over 3 pounds of salmon. That sounds a tiny amount from a European perspective, but you have to remember vast swathes of the US eat zero fish, ever. European per capita consumption of just farmed fish production was 6.7 kilos in 2021, the last year data was available. Farmed salmon divides opinion sharply, in fact in some quarters it is demonized. When I lived in California I could choose to only eat wild salmon and its depth of flavor and color is like night and day, but in France we get one choice of Salmon, farmed. There are by contrast a plethora of options of other fish even in supermarkets and my fish guy on the market (a long-suffering PSG fan), has 2-3 whole different types of fish, 6-8 filleted fish plus shellfish of various hue, seafood preparations like quenelles, fish moussaka and preserved fish like herrings, smoked salmon and kippers. But salmon he does not sell, as he cannot compete with supermarkets and their farmed Norwegian salmon. The concern with the farmed salmon, particularly that emanating from Norway, Scotland and Chile, is that it’s raised in poor conditions of health and hygiene for the fish. The fish meal used to feed them together with insufficient water filtration means that the farms cause real destruction around them and have effectively killed off the wild varieties of salmon that gave the original reputation to those fish origins. There are efforts to identify those sources that do play by the rules, but it’s not always that easy on markets or where wet fish is sold to identify whether you are buying good or evil salmon. Being marked as Organic is also a false friend, as that can refer to the food on which they are raised rather than the overall farming regime.

I once went wild salmon fishing off Morro Bay on the Central Coast of California. A friend won a prize at a private school fund-raiser that his kid went to. Another parent was a salmon fisherman, so he, and a plus one, got to go out on his commercial fishing boat. I was roped into being the plus one and at 6.00 am one Saturday morning was picked up to go and fish. My friend forced down me some disgusting anti-seasickness med with coffee, despite my protestations that as a semi-experienced sailor, it didn’t bother me. Off we sailed on a small fishing boat on a pretty flat, sunny morning sea while the Dramamine fucked with me. I felt like death for the first 45 minutes as we headed out to sea, finally the mate cooked us a fried breakfast – part of the prize thank god – and finally the nausea disappeared. We were using sonar to find the shoal of King Salmon the captain was in search of. This was definitely not Ahab and the beast, this was technology provided mastery of our domain. The visual clues were dolphins and seabirds, the dolphins smash into the shoal, which for safety swim in giant spherical shapes. The dolphin impact stuns and breaks off the salmon swimming on the perimeter of the ball, and they float up, stunned, to be gobbled up by the dolphins or the diving seabirds. The ball shape shows up clearly on the sonar, and we let out the fishing lines. Again, no romance here, just large hooks with shiny reflective aluminum lures on lines 800 yards long get trailed off the back of the boat as we slowly drift over the battered ball below us. We haul the lines back in and every 6-8 feet there is a large king salmon flailing on a hook, some of these are immense, the size of small sheep, 30-40 pounds in weight. Friend and I help with the hauling-in of the lines but the Mate and the skipper do the execution work, the gift to the school ensures we don’t have to bludgeon our way to our prize. An hour or so later we putt-putted back into Morro Bay, the catch nicely snuggled in the chiller hold covered in ice. We were each given one cleaned King Salmon as our bounty-come souvenir of our morning’s adventure on the high sea.

I am, as the regular reader will have spotted, quite fascinated by the daily saint’s days that the baker’s shop writes on the chalk board each day. So last Tuesday the 9th of April was in honor of St Gaultier. He should be the patron saint of reluctant labors, like my salmon fishing, and is in fact I was delighted to discover invoked in case of work related stress. He is also patron saint of Vintners, which is a good cause. St Gaultier was a professor of philosophy and rhetoric which was so exciting he became a Benedictine monk near Meaux, of mustard fame. He was appointed by the king, Philip 1st, abbot of a new foundation at Pontoise. The discipline at this new Abbey was lax, and he ran away several times to avoid the responsibility of making it less lax. He gave up completely and went to Cluny, which is actually not far from us at Charolles and was at the time the biggest and richest abbey in Eastern France. They sent him back to Pontoise. He tried to escape to Tourraine and hid himself on an island in the Loire, before yet again being led back to the abbey. He also escaped to an oratory near Tours before being recognized by a fellow pilgrim, who grassed him up. 

After being forced to return yet again to Pontoise, this time he decided to go to Rome to appeal directly to Pope Gregory and gave him his written resignation. Gregory instead ordered him to resume his responsibilities as abbot and never leave again. Accepting his fate, he campaigned against the abuses and corruptions of his fellow Benedictines, and was beaten and imprisoned for his troubles, which may have been why he was not so keen on the job in the first place. He resumed his work after being released and died in 1099.

St Gaultier or St Walter as he is known in English, was buried in the abbey at Pontoise, the place he had strived so hard to avoid. He was canonized by Hugh, Archbishop of Rouen in 1153, and was the last saint in Western Europe to have been canonized by an authority other than the pope. He did finally escape Pontoise, as they managed to lose his body during the Revolution.

I have escaped the city life of Lyon this week by taking a late break to ski with Dan in the Val D’Iseres, staying with a friend in Tignes 1800. It’s typical spring skiing so today we had sun, sleet, snow and rain. It is by coincidence the last week of the Easter school break for Paris so the resorts, although not full as it is late, are awash in Parisians. Some are gloriously old school in terms of spring skiing means one thing and one thing only, working on your tan. There are great examples of people at each bar and restaurant with pine yellow tans, working hard to get them to the full dark oak tan that some of the older French ski-instructors sport. It was a sunny day yesterday and there were folks laying out in deck chairs at 10.30 in the morning at 2500 meters above sea level. If I hadn’t watched him play badly against Villa later that day, I would not have been surprised to spot Ben White of Arsenal fame laying out there too. He is a young man who seems to have taken upon himself the curation of a serious tan all winter and with his odd goatee, looks more and more like a pantomime Captain Hook, grease paint and all. 

We are this week in the former land of Savoy, Italy is just over the mountain to our East, and so much cheese, ham and pasta is consumed. They have basically exhausted any way of cooking cheese, ham and potatoes and all combinations are sold for lunch and dinner. Tartiflette, raclette, baked whole Mont D’or and Rebluchon. Pasta with cheese, pasta with ham and cheese, pasta with cheese, ham and potatoes dominate the menus. The good news is that the local wines from Savoie are good accompaniments and great value, we had a Chignin Bergeron last night which was a bright pretty white without being floral. If you are spring skiing, you oscillate between being cold, wind swept and needing staunch hearty food and being hot and sun burned and wanting salads and bottles of rosé at lunch. Happily, the quality of food at French ski resorts puts to shame the rarefied efforts, at what is basically fast food, that masquerades as $45 lunches at any US ski resort. We are surrounded by valleys that in summer provide pasture for cows that deliver the milk for the Beaufort, the Abondance, the Raclette and the various Tomme de Savoies that enrich the local dishes. The other local drink owes much to St Gaultier’s fellow Benedictines, Chartreuse. In both Green and Yellow forms, the bottles are behind every bar, in every restaurant, in every shop. Here in the Alps they also have local Jenepé liqueurs which compete taste wise with Chartreuse and both the original and the local versions turn up in ice-cream and deserts. Lyon celebrates its affinity to Chartreuse like San Francisco does to Fernet, but for some reason our local wine shop on Felix Faure cannot seem to secure regular supplies. I am going to have a Chartreuse with a coffee one morning this week, just because it seems to be the done thing, and maybe I bring a bottle home.

Gones for Good: Episode 9 – Cheese coursing

April the first passed with several striving consumer brands demonstrating their hip edginess by self-knowingly winking at the April Fool’s tradition with hot dog flavor soda drinks, stoner-speak decoding apps and Korean BBQ scented deodorant sticks. It does not really translate in France, as their tradition for April 1st is a unique and esoteric take on pranking someone by attaching to their back a paper cut-out of a fish. So the worst that can happen to you is that you are the Poisson d’Avril for a period of time until you work out why everyone is sniggering and yes, it’s you, you have a paper fish stuck to you! 

The origin of this odd little tradition is that until the 16th century the new year was celebrated at different times, in different regions of France; the first day of spring in some places, Easter in other, 1st of April in others. Charles the IX decided to standardize the calendar, and the new year officially started in 1564 on January 1st. The word didn’t get distributed that well in pre-industrial days, but when the King’s Messengers finally spread the word, there were still some folks celebrating the turn of the year in April and giving the traditional gifts of fish – partially tied to the ending of Lent. The sophisticated and well-informed took the piss out of the rural rubes by giving them pretend fish gifts. So if you end up the butt of the office joke and everyone is sniggering behind your back as you discover a paper fish sellotaped to your designer hoodie, then blame King Charles.

What the French do take seriously is the overall quality of life, more as something to debate about rather than boast about. As much as arriviste foreigners we look at France and revel in its positive contrast with the tattered putrefying carcass of our homeland that once was England, or the political dumpster fire of a gerontocracy in thrall of big business that the US has sunk to, the French always find something to complain about. This week, the French woman’s magazine ‘Femme Actuelle’ published its list of top 50 places to live in France as a woman. They used data from the Ministries of the Interior and Health but also from numerous agencies known intimately to the French but who remain to me just one of many confusing collections of initials, including INSEE and CAF. They evaluated the quality of life for women through the comparisons of factors such as health, access to housing, public transport, security, juvenile delinquency and even pollution. For each, they gathered the most relevant indicators, but Femme Actuelle admitted that this was not always easy. The data had to be available, reliable and comparable for all the competing cities. As an example, they could find no reliable publicly available measures of the share of green spaces or pedestrian zones available in a municipality, although, under certain conditions, women favor them. They finally selected twenty-one indicators, to which a weighting coefficient was applied, according to the importance the magazine attached to them, focused around 4 key axis to derive the final ranking: the provision of specific care, security, the living environment and the action of the municipal authorities. Lyon was happy to receive the fourth place in the ranking behind Strasbourg, Rennes and Bordeaux. Paris was 7th and in last place Perpignan, just behind monied Antibes in 49th. Lyon takes the green space and pedestrianization super seriously, so might probably have scored higher if that was one of the measurable common factors.

The French also take cheese seriously. As part of Charolles’ inaugural Gourmet Festival, “Les Rendez-vous Gourmands” there was an event hosted by our local L’atelier des fromages, the cheese workshop, which being out of Lyon for the week we took advantage of. This was in contrast to Maître Doucet, who hosted 3 four-handed dinners at his Michelin starred Maison Doucet, each one featuring a guest pair of hands from another 1 or 2-star chef. Those little beanfeasts were €250 a head, each one; so I would be intrigued to find out how many locals ponied up for more than one of these. Doucet is a relentless self-promoter, appearing on the French equivalent of Good Morning America, cooking Charolais beef during the recent Agricultural Foire in Paris. That was the one that Macron spent an unprecedented 14 hours at, to prove his ‘man of the people’ standing. I am sure Doucet has a well-heeled fan base who made the journey up from Lyon or down from Paris for the rendez-vous. He was there as the event was kicked off on the Wednesday morning, which coincided with the weekly market, so the town was bustling, even in the incessant rain. They had drinks and folk music and the local folk culture society, Les Gâs du Tsarollais turned out in their peasant costumes of yore, which for some reason seem to include fur coats.

He is a good chap, our cheese guy, literally as his name is Bonhomme. He provided an “Atelier Brasero Autour Du Fromage” of 5 courses with drinks included for €30 a head. The rain and wind fortuitously decided to bugger off that Thursday morning, and so we had a warm spring evening around the Brasero, tucked away in the alley between the cheese shop and Place Baudinot. The Brasero for the unitiated, (myself included before the evening) is a large circular wood-fired grill with cast iron cooking surfaces above and surrounding the vented fire box.

We were welcomed to start the evening with a selection of cheese appetizers with a local Blonde beer. Each of the cheeses was given a formal introduction by Pierre Bonhomme, all examples were Fromage Fermier, which is a subtle but critical distinction. This means it is made on a farm and not in a large dairy, it brings a link directly from the animals raised to provide the milk, the land they graze on and the hands that work the cheese. We had a winter’s milk Beaufort, a fruity Comté (16 month old), a local Charolles AOP goat cheese and a mild sheep’s milk blue cheese.

The Brasero kicked into action and we had local beef grilled then bathed in an oil-based dressing of garlic, wild thyme and local honey. It was served with a slice of another Charolles goat-cheese and drizzled with honey and served with a White organic St Veran, which is the closest quality white wine to us. Pierre explained that Charolles as a AOP, appelation d’origine protégée, has one of the highest proportion of fermier producers, with each hustling to make the little towers of cheese, supposedly inspired by the Tour De Charles le Temeraire; it takes 3 liters of milk to make 1 Kg of cheese.

This was followed by a take on the traditional raclette, with a chilli infused raclette cheese, heated to bubbling hot served on bread with generous options of charcuterie to accompany it. This was served with a Fleurie.

For the traditional cheese course, we then had two contrasting but stand-out strong cheeses. There was a lively discussion about which are the ‘strongest’ tasting cheeses and Montgomery Cheddar, which he sells, got an honorable mention alongside Maroilles and Munster. He served Epoisses, which was made originally by a religious order but has been made in Burgundy for over 500 years, its orange rind a result of the regular brushing with Marc de Bourgogne, an eau de vie. There remains only one fermier producer still producing it today. This was accompanied by another strongly flavored rich cow’s milk cheese, Chaource, from 2 hours north-east of us on the way to Champagne. This was another farmer produced and refined cheese, Fermier AOP. We washed this glorious pairing down with Hautes Cotes De Beaune and had a serving of whole grain Dijon mustard on the side. 

On the subject of strong cheese, we then had a tasting of Pierre’s ‘Fromage Fort’. This is a typical poor man’s food that takes leftovers and recreates something new. Generally it’s the odd pieces and leftovers of cheese that remain, shredded finely and mixed with cream or yoghurt, some alcohol (white wine or marc) and some also mix in leek or other vegetable stock. The beaten, smoothed version of a cream cheese is then eaten on toast. It’s an acquired taste and depends ultimately on the recipe as it is very sharp, pungent and acidic. Pierre makes one with only goats milk cheese or only cows milk cheese, never with sheep and never with blue cheese. If you like those acidic Danish blue cheeses, you will like Fromage Fort. I think you could also use it to revive olden wooden furniture or polish tarnished jewelry, not a great fan; although Dan, who was with me, loved it.

We finished the cheese exploration with Salers on whisky-flamed toast and the same Irish single malt whisky on the side. By this time most of the social awkwardness in throwing 16 people together had melted around the now-cooling brasero, so we had a rambling discussion on salted butter, whisky and whiskey, Brexit and walked away full, satisfied and happy into the dark evening streets, no fish stuck on our backs.