Our hungry traveller finds out it's impossible to just stick to an entree and a salad when you're out and about in the gastronomical haven of Lyon in France.
By week's end, my jeans won't do up. We go out with the best intentions ("Just an entree. A little salad, maybe?") only to crumble as a plate of glistening duck passes our table or the waiter seductively recites the dessert menu.
France's Lyon, the most gourmand city in the most serious foodie country, is defeating us. "How about just bread and cheese for dinner?" my husband asks hopefully one evening as we pass a fromagerie. We double back and take a table set in a pedestrian street of Lyon's Old Town, where cobblestone streets meander around the base of Fourviere Hill. Fromagerie Saint Jean is the passion-project of two young women, Naira Pitois and Charlotte Petitjean, who connected at cheese school in Lyon five years ago. Petitjean went on to manage a local fromagerie, while Pitois left for Australia.
"When Naira came back we had a drink... actually a lot of drinks," Petitjean laughs, "and decided to realise our dream and go into business for ourselves." They opened their fromagerie in 2020. Inside, it's cool and deliciously pungent. Beneath a wood-beamed ceiling, hung with a glittering chandelier, are glass cases filled with cheeses.
They are perfectly imperfect - mottled with blue-green mould, yellowed, ripe, wonky, oozy; as far from the homogenised supermarket versions as you can get. At least a fifth come from the immediate region and many, like a fresh sheep's cheese from just 10 kilometres away, are seasonal, the animals being allowed to rest over winter. Ethical production is part of the personal credo of Petitjean and Pitois.
The cheeses are available to take away - to enjoy en plein air in one of Lyon's immaculate gardens, or on a platter streetside with a glass of wine, watching the heritage funicular deliver tourists up to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourviere. Whichever you choose, it's worth surrendering control to Saint Jean's owners and their almost preternatural ability to match person to cheese.
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The Echidna
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