Chef Bocuse

SO I will try to write properly and with the proper grammer what I did today adn what I kind of came to the conclusions about Lyon so bear with me please.

So as some of you know I have beena bit down lately which hasn't been good for my morale. Trust me it is tough walking around a city askign people in broken French for a job or looking for an appartment in a city where you are lucky if a shoe box is empty to live in. And top that off with coming back to a small expensive hotel room with bare walls to look at (not the biggest morale booster). But anyways on to the probably best and highest point of my tripso far! Iam sure everyone is waiting for it....

As promised I went to have lunch at the top chef in the worlds restaurant here in Lyon. What an amazing experience it was.
Now for the whole story....

When you make reservations they tell you to take a taxi for one also that to book off two hours for your meal. SO you get there they bring you the menu etc just like a normal restaurant. Then when you order they bring you an amuse bouche .. A REAL AMUSE BOUCHE (a little something to wet you appetite) which was pumpkin soup with chesnuts and a small brioche bun. Now the soup was great but it tasted like melted craft cheese!! haha but that is only because of the amount of cream that was in it. To be honest though it tasted amazing.

Then for my entree (first course in France) I had three kinds of duck.
1) Duck Terrine stuffed with Foie Gras, pistacchios and truffles.
2)Foie Gras terrine
3) Duck consomme gellee with celeriac and Black Truffles

To put into words how delightfull and delicious that tasted I think is impossible, they were simple flavours that just meshed into one amazing dish.

Although I have had a lot of duck lately I think I may be getting ducked out a bit.

That is when the fun began first Mrs. Bocuse came into the dining room adn welcomed the guests and says she hopes you enjoy her husbands food. about 5minutes later Chef Bocuse came into the dining room and introduces himself to me. Of course I recognized him so I stood up shook his hand and introduced myself. In my best French I explained who I was and what I was doing here, but he didnt understand me so he said merci adn continued onto the next table. He took some pictures with some patrons. MY waiter saw what happened so he calls the chef over and in a much better French he tells the chef who I am and why I am there. Chef Bocuse looks at me smiles, takes the napkin off my lap, takes me by the hand and stands me up. I thought he wanted to take a picture with me standing up thats all. But he doesnt let go of my hand and instead leads me through the entire dining room and straight into the kitchen. Everyone stared at me wondering who I was that I was being led by the hand by Chef Bocuse.

When I got into the kitchen Chef introduced me to his Chef De Cuisine and his Sous Chef. Suddenly one of the cooks cleared off the pass (plating area) and Chef called over his Chef De Cuisine and Sous chef to join in the picture with me and him. After we took the pictures Chef told his Chef De Cuisine (main guy in the kitchen) to give me a tour of the kitchen. Which I got and when I was done I thanked everyone and went back to my seat getting lots of stares from the customers. I sat down at my seat and my meal was served I had:
Pigeon with cabbage stuffed with mashed potatoes and I believe a quanelle of calf's liver and a sweet potato chip with a sauce for the gods. How to describe pigeon. I guess it tasted very earthy but really good. I think its definitelly an aquired taste. But either way the pigeon leg was wrapped in pastry adn a design cut into the pastry which I thought was cool.

(skip ahead an hour)

When I was done eating I was waiting outside for the taxi and chef Bocuse comes back from visiting another one of his restaurants. He sees me outside and tells me to sit down on teh bench next to him. He asked me a few questions and I answered them but then he asked me some things i didnt understand in French so I politely told him I only understand a little french. So he asked me for my resume. When I opened my knasack I told him I had come fully prepared in hopes that he woud let me stage for the day. He smiled looked over my resume and he asked me another question and then said he would call me at a later time. He walked inside the restaurant and thanked me for coming.

Even if he never calls me I learned some very valuble information today. Simple food is better than all the fancy things chefs are doing these days. The food was simple not too many ingredients on one plate but nice and tasty. The cooking was very classical flavours but simple and I liked that. I also realized what I wanted as chef and how I wanted to be as a chef.

The rest of the day I walked around old lyon and handed out resumes getting turned down left and right so that wasnt good but i focused on the positive and teh day adn it helped clear my head and know whatI wanted for the future and for the rest of of my stay in europe.

yehuda