This restaurant, in the sleepy town of Chasselay, 21km north of Lyon, was founded in 1906 in a former coaching inn and its ownership has passed down through the generations to this day. The eponymous head chef, who took over the reins of the kitchen in 1984, worked at La Pyramide in Vienne prior to moving back to the family restaurant. The ground floor dining is quite large, seating up to 70 guests, carpeted and with well-spaced, generously sized tables. It had 2 Michelin stars in the 2014 guide.
The wine list was mostly French but with a few choices from further afield, even having a Greek wine listed. Example bottles were Loew Bruderbach Riesling 2012 at €40 for a wine that you can find in the high street for €14, Weinbach Cuvee Laurence Pinot Gris 2004 at €98 for a wine that retails at €81, and Guigal Chateau d'Ampuis 2005 at €180 for a label that costs €123 in a shop. There was plenty of choice at modest prices, and mark-ups were fair throughout the list.
A five course tasting menu was €115 but there were also menus at €65, €70 and €90. We ordered à la carte. A trio of nibbles appeared: cold courgette cream with crumble of dried fruit and fera (lake fish) fillet, mushroom soup with chestnuts and bean puree with ham. The courgette cream had superb flavour, the fish was impeccably cooked, and the mushroom soup had intense flavour (18/20).
Bread was made from scratch in the kitchen, a selection of bacon bread, cheese bread, cereal bread and baguette. These had very good texture, the star being the bacon bread (18/20). Avocado and crab salad with sugar peas, caviar and broad beans, sheep cheese with mint and ultra delicate potato crisps was beautifully presented, the crab very fresh, the avocado perfectly ripe, the mint flavour carefully controlled (19/20).
Scampi wrapped in angel hair pasta with white butter and Madagascar vanilla sauce reminded me of a similar dish at Lucas Carton in Paris I ate many years ago. The langoustines were sweet and tender, the pasta very delicate, the vanilla flavour mercifully subtle (19/20).
Sole fillet was laced with black truffle and was served with crayfish cream, tiny langoustines and artichokes, mushroom, baby onion and salsify with artichoke sauce. This was a gorgeous dish, prettily presented with delicate fish, tender vegetables, subtle crayfish flavour and a scent of truffle (20/20).
Quail with foie gras was encased in a delicate spicy crust and served with onion compote and apricot. This was another stuunning dish, the quail having lovely flavour and the seasonal apricot providing just the right level of acidity to cut through the richness of the liver (19/20).
Pre-dessert was pannacotta mandarin jelly with sesame tuile and a layer of nicely bitter mandarin orange. The texture was airy, the orange flavour coming through really well, the tuile delightfully delicate (19/20). Mignardise comprised choux bun with chocolate and creme Chantilly, superbly delicate praline tart with cassis macaroni and a stunningly delicate tuile. The excellent coffee was a brand called Ras D'almhare.
Fine sheets of bitter chocolate and hazelnut came with a morello cherry sorbet, reminiscent of a Black Forest gateau. The chocolate was intense, the cherry flavour superb (19/20). Caramelised apples came with puff pastry and subtly spicy cream flavoured with cinnamon that nicely lifted the dish (18/20).
Service was excellent, the staff friendly and helpful, topping up flawless. The bill came to €162 (£129) a head with pre-dinner drinks, excellent Alsace wine and a glass of dessert wine. If you ordered more modestly then a typical bill might be £90 a head. This seems to me a bargain for food of this calibre. I had no real expectations of this restaurant, which seems entirely off the media radar. Yet all the way through the meal the food was superb, with dazzling technique, fine presentation and high-grade ingredients. There are many worse 3 star Michelin restaurants than this.
Further reviews: 25th Mar 2017
David Woodhead
We went to this restaurant last week solely on the basis of your recommendation. As we do not drive and there appears to be nowhere more convenient to stay than Lyon, getting there involved getting the last bus from Lyon, which arrives conveniently just before 8 pm, and forking out (70 euros plus) for a taxi back into town. This effort and expense were fully justified by the meal itself, with fish dishes of red mullet and John Dory and a pigeon main course being especially memorable. I wonder how much significance to attach to M. Lassausaie being a Meilleur Oeuvrier de France, a status shared with Jerome Nutile, at whose newly-starred restaurant in Nimes we ate almost equally well the previous evening, and Christophe Roure, the merits of whose Le Neuvieme Art in Lyon I flagged up to you earlier in the year. All three demonstrate technique and, more importantly, judgement to a remarkable degree.
David Woodhead
The best meal we had in 2015 was on the last evening of the year, at Le Neuvieme Art in Lyon. It may not have been there when you visited the city in Nov 2014, since the restaurant moved into Lyon during that winter, bringing with it the two stars that the chef had earned at its previous location (St Just St Rambert). This meal really hit all the right notes, not least in terms of consumate skill and precision, as well as striking the right balance between classicism and modernism. On a par with Mere Brazier and better than La Pyramide (we have yet to get to Guy Lassausaie, but look forward to doing so).