The gastronomic capital of the world — bouchon Lyonnais, Paul Bocuse's legacy, quenelles, andouillette, and the Mères who invented it all
Lyon sits at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers, 470km south of Paris, with 4,000+ restaurants in a metropolitan area of 1.4 million people — a restaurant density that has made it, by most critical assessments, the greatest food city in France and therefore one of the two or three greatest food cities on Earth. The central institution is the bouchon Lyonnais: a traditional lunch-only workers' restaurant (never dinner, always midday) serving offal, pork in every preparation, quenelles de brochet (pike dumplings in crayfish cream), andouillette sausage (tripe sausage, an acquired tast…
Lugdunum was founded by the Romans in 43 BCE on the hill above the Saône confluence and became the capital of the Three Gauls — the administrative, road, and commercial hub of Roman France, with a population that exceeded Rome itself in some census years. Christianity reached Lyon by the 2nd century CE; the 177 CE martyrs of Lyon (48 Christians executed under Marcus Aurelius) are among the earliest documented Christian martyrs in the west. The medieval city became France's financial capital during the silk boom; the canuts (silk weavers) staged Europe's first documented organized workers' upr…