A bouchon is a type of restaurant found in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, that serves traditional Lyonnaise cuisine

Cuisine

Cuisine is a characteristic style of cooking practices and traditions, often associated with a specific culture. Cuisines are often named after the geographic areas or regions that they originate from...

, such as sausages, duck pâté or roast pork. Compared to other forms of French cooking such as nouvelle cuisine

Nouvelle Cuisine

Nouvelle cuisine is an approach to cooking and food presentation used in French cuisine. By contrast with cuisine classique, an older form of French haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine is characterized by lighter, more delicate dishes and an increased emphasis on presentation.-History:The term...

, the dishes are quite fatty and heavily oriented around meat. There are approximately twenty officially certified traditional bouchons, but a larger number of establishments describe themselves using the term.

Typically, the emphasis in a bouchon is not on haute cuisine

Haute cuisine

Haute cuisine or grande cuisine was characterised by French cuisine in elaborate preparations and presentations served in small and numerous courses that were produced by large and hierarchical staffs at the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe.The 17th century chef and writer La Varenne...

but, rather, a convivial atmosphere and a personal relationship with the owner.

History

The tradition of bouchons came from small inns visited by silk workers passing through Lyon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

According to the dictionary Le petit Robert

Petit Robert

Le Petit Robert is a popular single-volume French dictionary first published by Paul Robert in 1967, an abridgement of his eight-volume Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française....

, this name derives from the 16th century expression for a bunch of twisted straw. A representation of such bundles began to appear on signs to designate the restaurants and, by metonymy

Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...

, the restaurants themselves became known as bouchons. The more common use of "bouchons" as a stopper or cork at the mouth of a bottle, and its derivatives, have a different etymology.

Today

Since 1997, Pierre Grison and his organization, L'Association de défense des bouchons lyonnais (The Association for the Preservation of Lyonnais Bouchons), bestow annual certifications to restaurants as "authentic" bouchons. These restaurants receive the title Les Authentiques Bouchons Lyonnais and are identified with a sticker showing the marionette

Marionette

A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...

 Gnafron, a Lyonnais symbol of the pleasures of dining, with a glass of wine in one hand and a napkin bearing the Lyon crest in the other.

The following list, subject to some fluctuation as the certification is bestowed annually, contains most of the certified bouchons: Abel, Brunet, Café des deux places, Café des fédérations, Chabert et fils, Daniel et Denise, Chez Georges le petit bouchon, Les gones, Hugon, Le Jura, Chez Marcelle, Le Mercière, La mère Jean, Le mitonné, Le Morgon, Le musée, Chez Paul, Les Trois Maries, A ma vigne, and Le Vivarais.

The Petit Damier and Le Connétable on the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec

Rue de l'Arbre-Sec

The Rue de l'Arbre-Sec is an old street located in the 1st arrondissement of Lyon, near the Place des Terreaux and the Opera Nouvel. It starts perpendicular to the rue Édouard-Herriot and ends with the Quai Jean Moulin crossing the rue de la République...

 should also not be missed.

While many bouchons are now oriented strongly towards the tourist market, with increased prices and less traditional fare as a result, a typical meal in a real bouchon costs around €12-15 .

Cuisine

Typical items in the bouchon repertoire include:
Soup: Tripe

Tripe

Tripe is a type of edible offal from the stomachs of various farm animals.-Beef tripe:...

 soup, pumpkin soup
Salads and cold appetizers: Chicken liver salad, pork head cheese

Head cheese

Head cheese , or brawn , is a cold cut that originated in Europe. A version pickled with vinegar is known as souse. Head cheese is not a cheese but a terrine or meat jelly made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig , and often set in aspic. Which parts of the head are used can vary, but the...

, groins d'âne salad (literally, "donkey snout" salad), marinated herring

Herring

Herring is an oily fish of the genus Clupea, found in the shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans, including the Baltic Sea. Three species of Clupea are recognized. The main taxa, the Atlantic herring and the Pacific herring may each be divided into subspecies...

s, salade Lyonnaise (lettuce

Lettuce

Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant of the daisy family Asteraceae. It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable. It is eaten either raw, notably in salads, sandwiches, hamburgers, tacos, and many other dishes, or cooked, as in Chinese cuisine in which the stem becomes just as important...

 with bacon

Bacon

Bacon is a cured meat prepared from a pig. It is first cured using large quantities of salt, either in a brine or in a dry packing; the result is fresh bacon . Fresh bacon may then be further dried for weeks or months in cold air, boiled, or smoked. Fresh and dried bacon must be cooked before eating...

, croutons, mustard

Mustard (condiment)

Mustard is a condiment made from the seeds of a mustard plant...

 dressing, and a poached egg

Egg (food)

Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...

)
Hot appetizers: gateau de volaille (chicken liver cake), boudin

Boudin

Boudin describes a number of different types of sausage used in French, Belgian, German, French Canadian, Creole and Cajun cuisine.-Types:*Boudin blanc: A white sausage made of pork without the blood. Pork liver and heart meat are typically included...

 noir (blood sausage, usually served with warm apples)
Offal: Andouillette

Andouillette

Andouillette is a coarse-grained tripe sausage made with pork , chitterlings, pepper, wine, onions, and seasonings. Andouillette sausage is a smaller version of the andouille sausage, generally smaller than 25 mm in diameter...

 (pork

Pork

Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig , which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC....

 offal sausage), assorted offal

Offal

Offal , also called, especially in the United States, variety meats or organ meats, refers to the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs other than...

 gratin

Gratin

Gratin is a widespread culinary technique in food preparation in which an ingredient is topped with a browned crust, often using breadcrumbs, grated cheese, egg and/or butter. Gratin originated in French cuisine and is usually prepared in a shallow dish of some kind...

, Breaded Tripe
Fish: Stingray, quenelle

Quenelle

A quenelle is mixture of creamed fish, chicken, or meat, sometimes combined with breadcrumbs, with a light egg binding. It can also be served vegetarian, or "nature". It is usually poached. Formerly, quenelles were often used as a garnish in haute cuisine; today, they are usually served on their own...

s (ground fish dumplings), grilled fillets
Meat: Coq au vin

Coq au vin

Coq au vin is a French braise of chicken cooked with wine, lardons, mushrooms, and optionally garlic.While the wine is typically Burgundy, many regions of France have variants of coq au vin using the local wine, such as coq au vin jaune , coq au Riesling , coq au pourpre , coq au Champagne, and so...

, pot au feu (pot roast), chicken thighs stuffed with morel

Morel

Morchella, the true morels, is a genus of edible mushrooms closely related to anatomically simpler cup fungi. These distinctive mushrooms appear honeycomb-like in that the upper portion is composed of a network of ridges with pits between them....

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Vegetables: Cardoon

Cardoon

The cardoon , also called the artichoke thistle, cardone, cardoni, carduni or cardi, is a thistle-like plant in the aster family Asteraceae. It is the naturally occurring form of the same species as the globe artichoke, and has many cultivated varieties...

 à la moelle (in bone marrow), barboton, pailasson de Lyon
Cheese: Saint-Marcellin

Saint-Marcellin

Saint-Marcellin is a soft French cheese made from cow's milk. Named after the small town of Saint-Marcellin , it is produced in a geographical area corresponding to part of the former Dauphiné province . It is generally small in size, weighing about 80 grams , with a mottled creamy-white exterior...

, Saint-Félicien

Saint-Félicien (cheese)

Saint-Félicien is a cow's milk cheese produced in the Rhône-Alpes region of France. In France, it is designated a dauphinois cheese, referring to the former French province Dauphiné where it originated...

, Rigotte de Condrieu

Rigotte de Condrieu

The rigotte de Condrieu is a type of cheese made with goat's milk which originates in the Lyonnaise region of France and is named after the town of Condrieu....

Desserts: tarte praline (praline

Praline

Praline is a family of confections made from nuts and sugar syrup.-Europe:As originally inspired in France at the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte by the cook of the 17th-century sugar industrialist Marshal du Plessis-Praslin , early pralines were whole almonds individually coated in caramelized sugar,...

 tart), lemon meringue pie

Lemon meringue pie

Lemon meringue pie is a type of baked pie, usually served for dessert, made with a crust usually made of shortcrust or shortbread pastry, lemon curd filling and a fluffy meringue topping. Lemon meringue pie is typically prepared with a bottom pie crust, but with no upper crust: i.e. the meringue is...

, caramelized apples, bugnes

Angel wings

Angel wings are a traditional sweet crisp pastry made out of dough that has been shaped into thin twisted ribbons, deep-fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Traditionally present in several European cuisines, angel wings are known by many other names and have been incorporated into other...

 de Lyon (miniature beignet

Beignet

A beignet in the U.S. is a pastry made from deep-fried dough, much like a doughnut, and sprinkled with confectioner's sugar, or frostings. Savory versions of beignets are also popular as an appetizer, with fillings such as maple or fruit preserves....

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