Lyon's reputation as a city devoted to eating and drinking dates back to time immemorial. The Roman legates appreciated Lyon as a staging post entirely devoted to table pleasures. The region's best produce was already familiar in the capital of the Gauls: poultry from Bresse, lamb and beef from Charolais, and fruit and vegetables from the Rhone valley or the Plaine du Forez. Fish and game also arrived from Dombes after the twelfth century.
In Lyon, even vegetables have a place of honour, onions and cardoons being the finest two jewels. Onions are used in most of the dishes, and cardoons, grown almost exclusively in this region and in the south, are delicious cooked with marrow or au gratin.
In the 16th century, Catherine de Medicis and her armada of Italian cooks took up residence in the town, and their influence has left a lasting mark. Pork butchers here are past masters in the art of preserving meat, adding spice to stuffings and filling strings of sausages - such as rosettes, Jésus, and saveloy - with truffles and pistachios, both being local staples. You can make a meal of cooked pork meats without setting the table!

But to become the world capital of gastronomy, this cuisine still lacked a signature. Enter the mères. Cuisine lyonnaise is indeed lovingly prepared by women. Mère Guy, Mère Filloux or Eugénie Brazier were just a few of these 'super mammas', renowned as much for their cuisine as for their strong character. Unsurprisingly, some of today's starred chefs, such as Paul Bocuse, were trained at their restaurants.

Lyon is world famous mainly because of its earthy rustic cuisine. Lyon's proud and independent-minded silk weavers had a legendary appetite. Elevenses here is a pantagruelian snack (known as le mâchon), which early birds eat at about 10am.
Push the door of a bouchon (the name given to a café-restaurant in Lyon) and let your fancy guide you. On a table near the door you'll find a series of salad bowls: choose from lentil salad, calf's head in sauce gribiche, Lyon salad (composed of poultry livers, hard-boiled eggs and lambs trotters in rémoulade, or a cervelle de canuts (a tasty whipped whey cheese spiced with salt, pepper, garlic, shallots, herbs and a dash of white wine or vinegar). But you can't be choosy in bouchons because there is often no menuyou have whatever is available and the dishes are brought to you, so you can eat your fill!
When you have polished off that lot, it is time for a selection of hot pork cuts, sausage with pistachio, sabodet sausage and andouillette. Then you'll get tabliers de sapeur (breadcrumbed tripe cooked and sliced), poultry-liver gateau with tomato purée, superb chicken in vinegar with potatoes à la lyonnaise, gratin dauphinois, gratinated salsify and a salad of dandelions. And that's just to set you up for the first part of the day.
Eating well? It is simply part of the Lyon lifestyle!