Hungry in Lyon

We are in Lyon, the food capital of France, eating with chopsticks. We ate at an Asian restaurant last night as well, and will ask for chopsticks again tomorrow, at a place where the steamed buns and barbecue pork belly, with a side of kimchi, are especially good.

While in Lyon we stayed on rue Franklin, in the 2nd arrondissement, and were greeted on arrival by a charming lady in a summery black top, flowing skirt and flipflops. She at once informed us that our rental, a bright, high-ceilinged and elegant space, is her former living room. We felt bad. How do you live without a living room? She also informed us that our room comes with a daily baguette, which we can fetch every morning from the bakery downstairs. This can only happen in France.

The Pope of gastronomy

The Lyonnais worship food and lionize those who make it. The great Paul Bocuse was a native son and a god. So it’s no surprise that, propped up on a high shelf in our rental apartment sits an oversize menu from Bocuse, the great man’s flagship restaurant. He is on the cover, in chef’s whites, chin propped on one hand, smiling down on us from his high shelf.

Inside, on the left-hand page, is a six-course table d’hôte. It starts with Lobster in Iced Pouilly-Fuissé Court-Bouillon with Lemongrass and Caviar. Next is Truffle Soup V.G.E. (“a dish created for the French president in 1975”), followed by Filet of Sole in Citrus Fruits Viennoise. The lucky diner, white napkin tucked into collar and gripping knife and fork, is then served Bresse Chicken Truffled and Cooked in a Bladder à la Mére Fillioux. If it hasn’t occurred already, a selection of local cheeses and a choice of desserts will finally cause the diner to burst.

The menu is dated summer of 2019, just before COVID, when the table d’hôte was 280 euros per person (not including wine).

You can of course order à la carte from the facing page, where the above dishes and others are listed together. In that case, the whole Bresse chicken, truffled, will set you back 260 euros, but if you’re on a budget you can opt for Whole Spit-Roasted Pigeon “as Monsieur Paul liked.” That will be 80 euros, monsieur. A plate of Truffle Soup V.G.E — you know, the soup created for Valéry Giscard d’Estaing — is 90 euros, so this gives you an idea.

Our location on rue Franklin couldn’t have been better, as we were flanked by Lyon’s two historic rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, each just a few minutes walk from our front door. On our second day we headed for the Saône, where I elected to run to the confluence, which lies south, or to the left. After flowing for hundreds of kilometres apart, this is where the two rivers finally merge and flow onward as one body of water (the Rhône), and finally empty into the Mediterranean.

To the confluence and back, with a few minor detours, I managed 10 kilometres. Along the way I saw a scattering of tents, where some of Lyon’s homeless live — although I’m not sure if living in a tent qualifies as homeless. Probably not, and I apologize.

And in fact I saw decorative signs of permanence. A bouquet of plastic flowers stuck into the ground, a spray-painted upside-down bike, small flags fluttering in the breeze. In the shadowed interiors I glimpsed bedding, books, toiletries. No one home. Maybe they were out scrounging their next meal. In the food capital of France, where the great Bocuse is God, did these tent dwellers experience food insecurity?

I can’t say I like that term, “food insecurity.” I’m sure the experts invented it for very good reasons. It is clinical, likely has a definition hammered out at large conferences, conveys no emotion or judgment. Except, hungry actually feels like something and starving feels like something worse.

Dying of hunger

My mother often spoke of the war years, when hunger stalked the land. She remembered going to the village agora with her family to meet the trucks arriving from Athens. In the great capital, the Occupation was exceptionally cruel. Five percent of the Greek population would eventually starve to death, and most of those dead lived in cities. There are photographs of ordinary Athenians walking past piles of corpses on the street. They don’t turn their heads, for what else is there to see? Starvation killed more Greeks than bombings, reprisals, executions and battles with the Resistance ever would.

Some of Athens’s children were loaded onto trucks and taken to distant villages, where conditions were less lethal. Villagers could always forage for wild greens and prickly pear, set traps for migrating birds. They might have a garden, olive trees, figs. A few handfuls of beans could feed a family, even with an additional mouth from Athens. By meal’s end, everyone might still be hungry, but no one would starve.

Meanwhile the Occupiers blew up bridges, ships, roads and factories. Agricultural production ground to a halt, and most of what was left went to the Occupiers. If the Occupiers met resistance, they machine gunned farm animals, set fire to villages, massacred everyone on sight. Starvation was not a by-product of war, it was a strategic weapon of war, meant to destroy the spirit. During the war, only the occupied Dutch experienced a comparable level of food insecurity.

* * *

A young girl, maybe fifteen, watches children being handed down from a truck in the agora. Are the kids crying or too tired to cry? Do they seem frightened? What are they wearing? She never said and now it’s too late to ask. Mostly, she remembered swollen bellies, stick-thin limbs. She remembered their silence.

And another curious thing: she remembered bristles sprouting from the children’s faces. I’ve tried to look it up. Does starvation cause this? I’ve come up with nothing. But this one detail, the whiskered starving children — Afroditi would always insist on that.

Many years later, in her middle age, Afroditi would clap her hands with delight when any child entered her little grocery store. Grabbing a handful of candies or chocolates, she’d kneel in front of each child and fill its pockets. Never fruit, just candies and chocolates. Today’s parents would disapprove, and I wonder if they would understand.