A lion among Lyons

DESTINATION DINNERS 1: LYONS In the first of three quests to the food capitals of Europe, Michael Bateman visits Lyons, France's premier gourmet city, where he delights in the robust and delicious cooking of the country's greatest chef, Paul Bocuse

Getting to Lyons via Eurostar and the TGV (train a grande vitesse) is like travelling by magic carpet. My last visit there, on the way to Beaune, was a nightmare of air travel and negotiating France's second city in a hire car during the rush hour. Only once we had left Lyons, and were on the road to Burgundy, did peace descend and I began to notice, with a shock of pleasure, road signs indicating towards Beaujolais villages: Chenas, Julienas, Chiroubles, Fleurie, St Amour, Villie-Morgon, Mont Brouilly.

I didn't find a restaurant until 2pm and la patronne waved me away, declaring it to be absolument ferme, the chef had gone home. However, she relented and let me eat country pate, omelette, salad and tarte aux pommes. I drank a bottle of wine made from the Gamay grapes growing at the bottom of the garden. Only a few months old, it was full-bodied, lively and bright, with a fragrance of violets.

It was a memorable experience. If this is how they eat and drink when the chef is away, no wonder the Lyonnais region is celebrated for its outstanding cooking. And now Lyons is as easy to get to (for southerners at least) as Glasgow or Edinburgh, thanks to Eurostar. You book in at Waterloo only 20 minutes before your 8.50am departure, arrive in Lille two hours and 10 minutes later, transfer to the TGV, flash through the lovely countryside, eventually passing the above Beaujolais villages at 270km per hour, and decamp in the centre of Lyons at 4pm. There's still time to visit the cathedrals and winding streets of the old town or browse in the shops (collectors of antiquarian books and philatelists are well served in this old-fashioned city) before dinner.

In the evening there's a choice of the city's 400 restaurants, from a very modest price (a three-course meal for pounds 10 or so) up to the top rank (we'll come to M Bocuse).

Next day you might think of visiting the covered market, Les Halles. You won't need an early call, since it doesn't open until 10am. It's an education to watch the artistry of the butchers preparing the meat and the professionalism with which fish is filleted and displayed at this high-profile but not overcrowded market. There's plenty to buy to take home, from the rosettes de Lyons (a kind of salami) and ready-made quenelles de brochet (pike parcels) to olives and cheeses. They will vacuum-pack the slightly odorous local St Marcellin so you don't have to worry about bearing it home.

The city's chefs also patronise Les Halles and meet in the market cafe over a Pot du Rhone - a wine bottle with a two-inch thick glass base (so that boules players can lodge them in the gravel and they won't fall over).

While there, I try a typical market dish: three rounds of andouillette (the local grilling sausage) and a slice of duck liver pate are laid on a plate, surrounded with a cream-and-egg mixture, and then placed under a salamander grill. The savoury custard cream blisters and browns. Lovely. But steady now, there's dinner with Paul Bocuse to come.

I'm staying in the city centre Sofitel hotel, by the vast main square, and overlooking the Rhone (locals will tell you the city sits on three rivers, the Rhone, the Saone and the river of wine flowing from Burgundy). Bocuse's restaurant, the Auberge at Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or (better known as Paul Bocuse, since that is the name emblazoned on the roof in letters about a metre high), is outside Lyons.

The floodlit building is coloured circus bright red, green and orange, and features paintings of dishes conceived by the first great French master Antonin Careme, plus assorted plumed golden cockerels and a zodiacal clock. Its entrance is in a wall labelled Rue des Grands Chefs, and decorated with a mural with windows showing the various stages of French culinary history in trompe-l'oeil. This art form is special to Lyons, where some 400 buildings are similarly adorned with scenes from the city's history.

The mural shows how the history of French cooking unfolds via Careme, and here in Lyons via the renowned Mothers, les meres Fillioux and Brazier (the first women to win three Michelin stars for their respective restaurants), and then through Fernand Point of La Pyramide, the father of post-war cook- ery from whom the young Bocuse learnt the trade.

M Bocuse has promised to meet us (being a friend of my host, Sofitel's manager, Eric Obeuf). But on the day, he can't get back from Epcot Disneyworld in Florida where he runs the prodigiously successful French Pavilion with his pals Roger Verge and Gaston Lenotre. Instead Roger Jaloux, his head chef for 32 years, no less, is there to welcome us.

Paul Bocuse is a legend, and at 71 shows no sign of stepping down. He is a classical cook, rooted to local traditions and fiercely opposed to so-called nouvelle cuisine: "the less food on the plate, the more it costs", as he puts it.

And yet in his younger days, in the Sixties and Seventies, Bocuse was regarded as the pioneer of this new cooking. So it goes. Most significantly he was the first of a new wave of owner-chefs who changed the face of the profession in France, raising the status of chefs to that of movie stars.

The agenda has moved on. Currently, it is the post-modernists who are slugging it out. Some, led by three-star chefs Joel Robuchon and Alain Ducasse, issued a manifesto warning of the dangers of "multi-culturalism" in French cooking (such as kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass sneaking on to the list of regular ingredients). A rival group, under Alain Senderens and Michel Guerard, dismisses the manifesto as archaic. Paul Bocuse keeps his counsel: "French cooks are a divided family. But they are a family."

What we found at Collonges were classical and regional delights, representative of the hearty appetites of a region which gives its name to dishes with added fried onions (such as pommes de terres Lyonnaises). We started with foie gras, and then had scallops of salmon with sorrel sauce - a dish invented by Bocuse's neighbours at Roanne, the Troisgros brothers.

The local free-range chicken, the carefully reared poularde de Bresse (it costs three times more than an ordinary one) appears on the menu in one form or another, sometimes en vassie (stuffed with truffles and cooked in a pig's bladder). But our main course was cote de veau, a piece of tasty veal cooked en cocotte until meltingly soft.

There were many skilful three-star touches. The initial amuse-gueules, for example, and a delicious extra dish, which arrived unsolicited, of red mullet served cold with tomato fondue (see recipe); a sorbet served between courses was sharpened with the local marc du Beaujolais; cheeses from Mere Richard, whom we had visited in Les Halles; and the dessert, creme brulee, followed by petits fours and little chocolates. The wines were Burgundies, Rhones and Beaujolais with a familiar ring to them, having been supplied by local merchant Georges Duboeuf, familiar to us from British high-street wine shops.

It was a confident and relaxing meal, satisfying but undaunting. There are some food critics in France who argue that Bocuse should move with the times to sustain his third star. But at his time of life, this is surely beside the point. Paul Bocuse has earned his place. He is as essential to the image of French cooking as the Eiffel Tower is to the skyline of Paris.

RED MULLET WITH TOMATO AND SAFFRON

Serves 4

8 small red mullets

salt and pepper

flour

oil

For the tomato fondue:

1kg/2Ib ripe tomatoes

2 tablespoons oil

salt

pepper

garlic clove

pinch of sugar

pinch of saffron

fennel stalk

sprig thyme

12 bayleaf

few grains coriander

pinch of chopped parsley

slices of peeled lemon

chervil leaves

Season mullets with salt and pepper. Roll in flour and brown rapidly in a frying pan in a little oil. Place in an oiled ovenproof dish.

Cover with a fondue of tomatoes, prepared in the following manner: skin and seed the tomatoes, retaining the juice. Chop coarsely and put into a frying pan in which a little oil is heating. Season and add a crushed garlic clove, sugar, saffron, a fennel stalk, thyme and powdered bayleaf, coriander and parsley. Cook slowly until the liquid is reduced by three- quarters.

Bring the fondue-covered mullet to the boil on top of the stove, then place, covered, in a 325F/170C/Gas 3 oven for eight to 10 minutes.

Cool and garnish to taste with thin slices of peeled lemon. Place a chervil leaf in the centre of each lemon slice. Serve mullet at room temperature or slightly chilled.

! Paul Bocuse's Auberge at Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or (0033 4 72 42 90 90) is 12km north of Lyons at 40 Rue de la Plage. It is open daily, noon to 1.30pm; 7pm to 9.30pm. Dinner for two from 510FF to 740FF. Lunch per head costs 410FF (drinks not included). It is advisable to book at least two days in advance. For rail bookings (starting at pounds 99 London-Lyons return) ring Rail Europe on 0990 300003. For details of Sofitel-Bellecour/Bocuse breaks ring Sofitel on 0181 741 9699.

! Next week Michael Bateman in Brussels