View from the dessert station

As usual this blog post is quite late. I'm not getting very good at keeping up with posts as often as I should, but hey, I'm neck deep in Objective-C and Cocoa Touch (programming languages for iPhone) and I've been yearning for some free time lately.

A month ago,  I went to one of the more famous local restaurants by a very well known French chef, Paul Bocuse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bocuse) here in Lyon. From what I've been told, Bocuse, a local of Lyon, on becoming famous had decided to grace the people of his city with his cuisine but at a lower price and so opened a series of brasseries. The four brasseries, Nord, Sud, l'Est and l'Ouest, located in Lyon, are named so because the showcase French cuisine from different regions of France (obviously North, South, East and West).  

The L'est (French for East), a Bocuse brasserie thats located by the old train station in Brotteaux, Lyon (right at the metro stop of the same line [ligne B] for those who'd like to visit) has kept me away for most of my months here, mainly because of its over-my-student-price-range menu but also because I tend to stay away from the very French dining experiences because of my inability to succinctly explain to the chef in front of me what I would like him to do with my lamb leg.

A month ago however, my girlfriend's mom and aunt came to visit and her aunt graciously took us out for dinner to the l'Est. I was expecting the experience to be typical of a high class French establishment - noses turned up towards foreigners - but I'm happy to say it was a great experience overall. Even though we were told that the wait would be an hour or more before we got a table, we were seated in twenty minutes and had plenty of bread and wine to whet our appetites. 

The menu wasn't as vast as I expected it to be, but then again its the cuisine of a select region created by a certain chef. The lamb chops I ordered and which I waited 25 minutes for, were as succulent and overflowing with taste as I wanted it to be. The entire time though, since we were seated inches from the desert station, I could see all sorts of deserts being whipped up and carted away to be served and I couldn't wait to sink into one of those. My view from the dessert station, which the photo above doesn't do justice to, gave me an view into how efficiently managed the restaurant was. Even though the stations seemed small and the staff too few to handle the demands of the burgeoning crowd, plates of delicious looking food were produced almost every minute and bustling waiters, screaming at their counterparts as they stormed through the room with their trays held high, transfered the plates to the tables of the hungry customers at top speed.

While we were sitting there, my girlfriend's aunt and I were wondering if the plate of 'golden bars' in front of us (shown in the picture above) was butter and whether I could sneak some it off for our bread. I don't know why it slipped my mind the entire time that the French don't butter their bread (I don't think anyone in Europe does) but it took hours (yes, we were there for hours) of staring at the plate to come to the conclusion that it's biscotti of some sort.

All in all, I loved it. While French portions aren't enough to sate my ginormous appetite, I left feeling quite full and I wouldn't mind going back again (when I have a job).

And oh yea, I got the creme brulée and it was delicious as expected.