And then there’s the Poulet en Vessie, which is a chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder. Or the volaille à Noelle (I could only find recipes in French, so the link here is to a Youtube video of a chef making the dish), it’s essentially a deboned bird, refilled and stuffed with vegetables and meat. For instance, andouillette, which sounds like the andouille sausage (common in the US), but is instead full of pigs intestines and stomach. But I have no clue about the food of Lyon, some of which sounds like nothing I’ve ever seen on French restaurant menus. I have enjoyed eating French food, one of my favourite all-time meals is Duck Confit. He does, however, work for a baker, and attends culinary school for a bit – not just any culinary school, but L’Institut Bocuse – then eventually lands up at La Mère Brazier, which first opened in 1921. And somehow needing to prove residence in France – although they were still in the process of applying to be residents?Īt any rate, they made it there, with a little help from some friends.īut there, still, Buford had a hard time getting his foot into any restaurant kitchen. All kinds of supporting documents were needed, even financial statements for each child (though they were still in diapers). That is, while it was easy to land in Italy, figure things out as they went along, even just the process of getting to France (legally that is) was hard. But they soon learned that France was not Italy. And Buford had been wanting to work in a French kitchen. They lived in Tuscany for a year, his wife loved to travel and could easily pick up languages. Packing up and heading to a new country for a while is nothing new to Buford and his family.

“In any case, the implications were intriguing to consider: that at one point French cuisine did not exist, or at least not in a form that we would recognise today and that then, at another point, it did, and that the Italians may have had something to do with its coming into being.”

Why Lyon? It’s the home of Paul Bocuse, Daniel Boulud grew up near there, and some consider it the gastronomy capital of the world.Īlso, Buford had come across the idea that French cuisine originated in Italian Renaissance kitchens: Similarly, this happens again in Dirt, this time in Lyon, France. In that book, he got to train in Mario Batali’s kitchen (of course, now that things have come to light about Batali, I wouldn’t know what to think of that), but at that time, I really enjoyed Buford’s writing, and his brashness in being able to jump into a professional kitchen and move from station to station. I read Buford’s previous book, Heat (published in 2006), and really enjoyed his adventures in the cooking world. Oh boy, it’s been ages since I’ve read a foodie book, and I was so excited to read this one. “No one in America eats food out of a pig’s bladder.”

Bill buford heat review