Paul Bocuse: The Lyon (France) Touring Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Paul Bocuse: The Lyon (France) Touring Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introduction

I chose to name this game after Paul Bocuse, the Michelin-starred chef whose home base was in Lyon.  Bocuse was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for his service to the French nation for popularizing nouvelle cuisine, preparing meals for French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and agreeing to sell frozen nouvelle cuisine under his name to Japan (and the sausage eaters of downtown Lyon).

Background Reading

Paul Bocuse’s cookbooks are a joy to read, but the dishes described in them are difficult to prepare:

-Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking translated by Colette Rossant

-Bocuse à la Carte translated by Colette Rossant

Lyon has some terrible history that they choose not to forget.   Many of the crime stories have been turned into television series and movies.  Lyon’s history is the subject of many nonfiction and fiction books:

-The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

Belle Epoque serial killer – a true story crime fiction like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

-Shantytown Kid by Azouz Begag

The problems of a star pupil from a minority group in France living in Lyon

-Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance by Patrick Marnham

-Unhealed Wounds: France and the Klaus Barbie Affair by Erna Paris

-Cours and Traboules de Lyon by Gérald Gambier

-The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Places to Visit in Lyon

-Musée de Beaux Arts

Located in a former Benedictine Convent, this museum houses art from Egypt to a large collection of Impressionist paintings.

-Old Town Lyon

The Quartier Saint-Jean and the Quartier Saint-Georges resemble Italy with their ochre-colored buildings with a few red ones here and there.

-Musée Gadgne

Puppetry and History of Lyon Museum

-Archaeology Museum

Lyon is an ancient Roman town.

-Les Halles de Lyon

Covered marketplace with 48 different shops.

-Colline de la Croix-Rousse

Lyon’s “traboules,” or covered passageways between courtyards of buildings around several blocks are located here.

-Fabric Museum

Lyon had a large silk industry during the Renaissance Period that is dealt with here.

-Museum of Decorative Arts

-Resistance and Deportation Museum

Lyon was known as the Capital of the Resistance during the Second World War.

-Printing Press Museum

Lyon was an important bookmaking center in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

Typical Foods of the City of Lyon

-Tripe sausages

-Blood sausages

-Chicken Liver Salad

-Langoustines (crayfish) dumplings - quénelles

All of those dishes above come with huge salads from local markets or gardens owned by the city’s bouchons - local cafes.  Beaujolais Nouveau is the drink of choice with a lunch like this.

I think “high-on-the-hog” body parts go to Collonges outside the city Lyon for the Michelin-starred restaurants to use while Lyon still has some of the world’s best butchers and clean-up crews.

Fortunately, Bocuse did begin to make frozen gourmet dinners under his name for the Japanese markets in the 1990s that the locals in Lyon also got to make for dinner at night.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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