From the owner: Viandes Bovines françaises de qualité. Restaurant Agréé et contrôlé par AVSread more

Beautiful decor inside. Nice outdoor patio…read more The service was super slow The food was good, but not great. My steak was super tough to chew and hard to cut with a knife. Prices reasonable.

This is a standard issue neighborhood cafe in a rich neighborhood…read more Rich means that the establishment is well upholstered. The decoration is not only tasteful but plush. Artistic sensibilities rule. In this case, animal sculptures show up in unexpected locations - including a large giraffe in the center of the dining room. The house fills with monied locals. The managers knows most of them by name and attends to their every need. * * * The house is run to make money rather than to be a great center of exciting gourmandise. The menu is small and standardized, although printed in elegant font. What is offered are the staples of everyday contemporary French cuisine. Duck a l'orange. Salad lyonnaise. Poke and pad thai are now standard items on French restaurant tables. They have two or three versions of those. The menu never changes. * * * Examination of other restaurants in the neighborhood shows very similar nice rooms ... with nearly identical menus. Everyone wants their pave du thon. Everyone wants their ile flottante for dessert. Each room is more charming than the one you just saw. * * * These restaurants are likely to be partially industrial. Industrialized food in France can be very upscale. Think about flying first class on Air Emirates. The food will be absolutely magnificent. However, that food will be prepared in an on-the-ground airline kitchen which will mass produce wonderful first class food for all of Air Emirates flights out of their hubs. France has the equivalent for upscale cafes, where a restauranteur can buy perfect canards a l'orange, or perfect pates en croute from a commercial supplier. Because salad greens and tartares have to be absolutely fresh and high quality, the purveyor sees that such highly perishable goods are reliably delivered to clients' kitchens, in a form suitable for rapid serving. The beef or the salmon for a tartare would come in a single serving unit, in packaging designed for maximum freshness, to be ground in the kitchen just before serving, with a standard flavoring and garnishing package to be added at the very last minute. The rules of French restaurants require that some items be made absolutely from scratch. Innovation is also appreciated So while I do not know for sure, I suspect that what is served at Le Splendide is a mix of a) premade-from-presupplied-fine ingredients b) half-to-three-quarters-premade-also-with-fine ingredients c) If need be, a few all locally-made. The house then concentrates on a) decoration so that each establishment feels unique, beautiful and has a personality. b) high quality service. Le Splendid fits this formula to a T. So do nearly all of the restaurants around it. The formula works. All of these cafes were filled for Sunday lunch with regular patrons who were clearly enjoying themselves. * * * Le Splendid and its neighbors are in Brotteaux, a stylish neighborhood near the elegant nineteenth century Gare de Brotteaux. I am staying a mile away in Charpennes in a North African neighborhood with some gentrifiers. The restaurants in Brotteaux are amazingly similar to the restaurants in Charpennes. In Charpennes, the standard neighborhood restaurant is a kebab house. There are many up and down the main commercial street. They all feature the same menu of all veal kebabs, merguez, hamburgers and tacos. At any hour of the day, they are being patronized by locals who are just hanging out. Management knows the locals and there are long standing relationships of friendship. The execution on the standard items that the customer wants to see are excellent. (I don't think much of the steaks served as part of steak frites in the rich part of town. I don't think much of the mass market hamburgers served in the poor part of town. Everything else tends to be pretty good.) In both cases, the restaurants are served by standard suppliers. The kebab houses' suppliers have to be halal. Halal meat is first rate. The suppliers of upscale cafes also have to provide first rate inputs. It is a fierce point of pride in a kebab house that each establishment makes its own kebabs from scratch. I am sure there are comparable made from scratch items in Brotteaux cafes. In both neighborhoods, the cafes/kebab houses are a staple of the communal public life of the city. I like the kebabs of the kebab houses better than the duck a l'orange of the upscale cafes. The kebab houses have cheap tables and fluorescent lighting. The Brotteaux cafes are easier on the eye. They both capture the soul of the neighborhood. The kebab houses may have a little more soul.

My first restaurant visit in Lyon as not much open in neighborhood on a Sunday night. Touchscreen…read morekiosk ordering made it easy with pictures. Deluxe grill is very tasty. Chicken was more moist than expected and I especially liked the sausages. Cheesy bread with I think olives is also nice. Had enough to takeaway an extra meal. They even have my favorite Cherry Coke.

Simple everyday French cuisine with superlative execution…read more Superlative execution is a good thing. I had two dishes that you have eaten a million times. 1) Veal Parmigiana (French people eat this too. It is not purely an Italian dish). 2) Creme Brulee. Both of them were the finest versions I have ever had of either dish. * * * The Veal Parmigiana was a pure quality of raw ingredients play. The French have magnificent veal. The United States has mediocre veal. This dish shows what a huge difference veal quality means. One bite of the naked veal with no sauce and no cheese on it - And I could see I had entered a whole new realm of veal eating. There is more to La Belle Colombe's execution than just good veal. La Belle Colombe puts a thick slice of eggplant on top of the veal. The eggplant was the eggplantiest eggplant I have ever had in my life. ("Eggplantiest" is a real word. As of now. Sez me.) Their eggplant makes the eggplants I get in my supermarket at home seem like cardboard. Which did I like better, the veal, the eggplant or the tomato sauce with cheese? Oh my god, can I have ten weeks to decide With me eating their veal parmigiana every day just to be sure? * * * But then there was dessert. You think you know what creme brulee is all about? La Belle Colombe will change your entire thinking about the dish. Americans make a sweet creamy pudding on the bottom which gets covered with crispy caramelization on top. But the crisp caramel glaze is just a lid for what is in essence a very creamy custard. The sugar in the custard makes the dish dessert. La Belle Colombe reverses the roles. Very very little sugar is put in the custard. A spice is added - not to make things interest - but to make things dull. The cook is trying deliberately to make the custard as flat as uninteresting as possible. The spice cancels out whatever sugar or dairy taste is there - giving you a base of creamy nothing. Why would any cook deliberately do that? So You Taste The Crispy Brulee On The Top. The cook is saying, why should I bother grilling the custard if nobody is going to taste all the work I put into this? The creme brulee crust is not just a wrapper that you take off and throw away. The cook at La Belle Colombe puts much more of a char on the brulee crust than you are used to seeing. This brulee is really really really brulee. It is charred and broiled like a steak. And THIS crust really tastes like something. * * * Pretend that the custard in a creme brulee is the saxophone and the crust is the bass. The cook is saying - Bass Solo! The saxophone player gets away from the front of the stage and has a beer. It is time for the bass player to show what he can do. THIS brulee crust is Charles Mingus all the way! An interesting dessert I would be happy to have over and over and over again. * * * There are no novelties on the menu of La Belle Colombe. These are all standard French favorites. But they are so so good ... and in some cases ... they are original takes. A fine fine fine establishment.

From the owner: Les saveurs du Liban Le Falafel, dont le nom désigne un sandwich végétarien très répandu au Moyen…read moreOrient, est un établissement complet : un espace snack et un long comptoir brun, une salle de restaurant et un superbe caveau voûté aménagé en sous-sol. Ainsi, à toute heure de la journée, il est possible de déguster un des très nombreux sandwichs ou de découvrir au déjeuner ou au dîner, une large palette de plats libanais. Certains menus proposent d'ailleurs jusqu'à vingt mezze, petits hors-d'oeuvre chauds et froids. À l'étage inférieur, les convives peuvent aussi apprécier, tous les vendredis et samedis soirs, des spectacles de danses et de musiques orientales.