Nicolas Le Bec Awards

Nicolas Le Bec Restaurant Review:

This well air-conditioned dining room is infinitely relaxing. It is well-lit in a calm, ochre tone, and choral and instrumental music emanates through this urban paradise that many Lyon natives frequent. Because the kitchen of Nicolas Le Bec expresses his rare talent--for example, to make deliciously familiar a new flavor, as if it existed already in our minds. The harnessing together of asparagus-eel-foie gras, the smoked taste, the harmony of textures? But, it's good, of course! Crawfish, hardly cooked, with an incomparable softness, but "finished" in a marinière-style cream, with salicornes, Paimpol coconuts and bigorneaux. A piece of evidence, as strong as the meeting, however improbable, of a sea-bream and the juice of a young rabbit, having chosen a beefsteak tomato as the perfect intermediary. Behind the dishevelling technique of Lyon's petit prince radiates a pleasure and a brilliance seen in all his dishes: a corn-stuffed quail, plump like a duckling, paired with boletus mushrooms and foie gras. The businessmen are treated with the lunch, the faithful with the dinner and in the mezzanine all share Iberian snacking--tranchettes and gorgeons--in good company. In this respect, the wine list is intelligently arranged by vineyards and owners, with prestigious labels filling its columns, yet not sufficiently featuring less aristocratic bottles. For €50 and less, look to le morgon de Lapierre, le cairanne de Richaud or Nine de Sénat. The service is smiling and elegant, perfectly in tune with this warm atmosphere.