In the mood for street food? The Lyon Street Food Festival, taking place this year from June 13 to 16, should tickle your taste buds with its often-surprising nibbles (andouillette kebab, chorizo-filled baos) priced at around €5. Prefer food halls? Food Traboule opens its dozen counters in a 16th-century house in Vieux-Lyon (check around €25).
For restaurant meals that are just as surprising, here's our selection of addresses, from affordable tapas to Michelin-starred experiences.
With his sharing plates (from €15), Steven Thiebaut-Pellegrino, a chef with a passion for martial arts, knocks culinary conventions to the ground. The plates, which play with surprising elements (seaweed, yeast purée), acidity (homemade pickles) and burnt flavors (barbecued baby gem lettuce), can be disconcerting, like the house playlist featuring Aya Nakamura and Colette Magny. But the tasting is very convincing. Behind his big beard and tattoos, the chef is a kind man who means your taste buds well.
Leptine 16, rue Hippolyte-Flandrin, 1er. Tel: 04-78-08-14-03.
A favorite. Chef Hubert Vergoin is a virtuoso capable of concocting lunch menus (from 21 euros) of stunning mastery. The day Le Monde visited, a hake mousseline with mushrooms, bubbling in a perfect beurre blanc, had us spellbound. In the evening, the owner lets his creativity run wild, as evidenced by this char in brine, then smoked with hay and cooked at low temperature, which barely holds up under the tooth before melting under the tongue.
Substrat,7 Rue Pailleron, 4th. Tel: 04-78-29-14-93.
Chef Adrien Zedda's work is a demonstration of vigor: Yes, vegetables are enough to create haute cuisine. The menus (from €45 for lunch) exalt the vegetable, without trying to reproduce the icons of meat cuisine. A simple, thinly sliced turnip, for example, is transformed into a ravioli filled with mushrooms, in a creamy sauce spiked with a little Burgundy red wine.
Culina Hortus, 38 Rue de l'Arbre-Sec, 1st.. Tel: 04-69-84-71-08.
Mexican-born chef Carla Kirsch Lopez and her sommelier companion, Vincent Gerbelli, offer a unique format (menus from €58) blending flavors. The chef makes a tempura fried green asparagus, using nixtamalized flour for the dough – it's generally used for tortillas – and puffed rice, then adds mustard seeds. Subtly flavored and crispy, the vegetable takes on a gastronomic dimension. The work on chilis is also exceptional..
Alebrije, 1 Rue Justin-Godart, 4th. Tel: 04-72-00-03-02..
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