La Mère Jean

As the name implies, this restaurant is not going to score any points on decor or presentation. It offers regional dishes like tripe and fish dumplings. I had the later. The execution was on point. The dumplings totally had pike/fish flavor but so light and delicate. However the star is what lies beneath it. The lobster bisque was insanely good and brought added dimension to the dumpling. It was served with scalloped potatoes.

I started with the cheese and salad. I never had cottage cheese so fresh and light. No comparison to the one you get in the market. It was whipped with herbs and olive oil with a wonderful mouth feel.

The dessert was a let down. A praline tart. I should have gone with the cheese plate, but I wanted to end with something different.

Had to try a bouchon while in Lyon, and there are so many to choose from. We ended up at La Mere Jean.

First of all, they were very friendly and tried to explain each of the menu items to us. We each decided to order from the Menu options - each comes with a choice of appetizer, main and dessert.

Pros - They are reasonably priced and large, generous portions were served. Really liked the Lyonnaise salad - poached egg with pork belly salad = Yum! Although some thought the tripe was a bit too strong tasting, I actually liked that dish the most. Lots of tripe and the tomato sauce was flavorful. Dad liked the potatoes that came with the quenelles. Lots of desserts to choose from. Hubs loved the chocolate cake.

Cons - Some of the other dishes lacked flavor. Was looking forward to the quenelles in the lobster sauce - although the quenelles were fluffy and soft, they didn't really have any flavor overall nor did the sauce. Mom couldn't eat her chicken - said it was very dry.

This was the only bouchon we got to try. Wish we had more time in Lyon to try out more food places.

We stopped by La Mere Jean for some authentic Lyonnaise food on our first day in Lyon to find it closed for reasons unknown. We tried again the next evening and were happy to find it open. The menu included a number of traditional lyonnaise dishes. The salad was spectacular with a soft egg on top and yummy chunks of ham or bacon. We struggled to pick entrees as we weren't familiar with any of the foods but the waitress was very helpful. My husband loved the steak he ordered. My dish was a bit too eclectic for my taste but I could still appreciate the flavors. Dessert was also delicious, something along the lines of a pink cake with pear sauce. I'm not sure if that's the proper way to describe it but I wanted to lick the plate! Very happy we were able to have this authentic Lyonnaise experience.

I love eating at bouchons in Lyon. The bouchons feel like being invited to eat at someone's home. This is a very small Bouchon and fills up fast for lunch, so I would advise to come early when they open. My family really enjoyed our time at the restaurant and the servers were very kind with me, since it has been a long time since I spoke French. They will speak to you both in English and French, so it was really fun to practice learning. I asked the server to recommend a glass of wine to go with the quenelle I ordered and it was superb. The name of the wine is Le Liby verre blanc, you can even buy a bottle from them to go. The wine is hard to find at any stores or wine shops in Lyon, so if you enjoy a wine at a Bouchon, I recommend you purchase a bottle there to go. Great place, great food and great people working at the restaurant.

Very uneven. Most of my meal was great (œuf meurette and quenelle homardine), but the dessert was hard and bad (tarte praline). My wife's salade lyonnaise was disappointing. Too uneven to want to go back.

It was a misty December night in Place Bellecour, the top of the brilliantly lit blue Ferris wheel that dominates the square barely visible beneath the low-lying cloud cover. I was thinking about our meal just a few nights before just around the corner on Rue Marroniers and how good it was, but little did I know that the dinner waiting just ahead was going to be even better. It is no wonder that Lyon is the culinary capital of France, if not the World.

We visited Le Mère Jean, which translates to "The Mother Jean", on our first night in Lyon, a damp, chilly Saturday night, but she was fully booked - "Complet" - so we reserved a table for the following Monday at 7pm. The proprietor, Jean perhaps, recommended Les Comptoirs de Marroniers just down the cobblestone covered road, having learned to cook there as we were told. They were kind enough to make room for us based on her thoughtful recommendation and the subsequent meal was outrageous, a Lyonnaise four-course meal that blew my socks off for just €36, but that my friends is another story altogether.

Le Mere Jean is a small place in an old building, long and narrow, seating only 20-25 diners in a rustic dining room with a tiny kitchen at the back. That small kitchen produced a lot of chow, very good chow, generating a fair amount of heat in the process. A tad warmer than we would have desired, particularly because we were dressed for winter, we quickly acclimated in order to focus on the task at hand. A three-course dinner was waiting for my wife (from the €16 menu) and I (the €19.50 menu) with a 50cl bottle of Cote du Rhone setting us back a mere (no pun intended) €12, a pittance comparatively speaking.

Our first course, or "entrée" as it referred to here, was the Salade Lyonnaise, a huge bowl of fresh, seasonal greens topped with chunks of hot, salty bacon, homemade croutons galore, and two perfectly cooked poached eggs sitting on top. There was more than enough for the two of us and was absolutely wonderful, a recipe I shall incorporate into my own repertoire when we finally get back home.

For our second course, or "plat", my wife decided on the Chicken Fricasee, large chunks of de-boned chicken breast in a cream sauce that was both rich and flavorful. The Onglet de Bœuf Poêlè Sauce St Marcellin, a steak in a savory cheese sauce, was my choice, accompanied by potatoes Lyonnaise which are very similar to what many have come to know as potatoes au gratin. The steak was of a reasonable portion, about eight to ten ounces (500g), tender, and perfectly cooked to medium on the inside with just the right amount of char out. The cheese sauce that enveloped it was made from the local St Marcellin cheese, a savory, gooey concoction only the French could devise ... MERCI BEAUCOUP!

For our third and final course, dessert, my wife had the local favorite, a praline tart. Lyon is famous for their pralines, a pink candy-coated almond I have only seen here. They make a variety of desserts with them, including a praline brioche and, in this case, a crispy, baked pastry filled with a praline cream that resembled a small strawberry pie ... YUM! I had a warm chocolate cake surrounded by a sweet cream that was rich and delicious.

An incredible dinner for two, both three-course meals, and a bottle of wine set us back just $65, the best $65 I have spent in a long, long time. I am sure that I will fondly reminisce about my many superb meals while visiting Lyon, but this was one that I will not soon forget ... HOOAH!

CombatCritic Gives Mère de Jean 10 Bombs Out Of 10 And A Spot On My WALL OF FAME ... More Bombs Are Better!

Ten Bombs Equates To: "HOOAH!"

Translation for Civilians:

HOOAH!: "Phonetic spelling of the acronym HUA, which stands for 'Heard Understood Acknowledged.' Originally used by the British in the late 1800's in Afghanistan. More recently adopted by the United States Army to indicate an affirmative or a pleased response." - Urban Dictionary

"The U.S. Air Force stole 'HOOAH' from the Army because we were part of the Army until 1947 and rather than waste a bunch of time coming up with something new and unique like "ROO-YAH" or "HAL-A-LOO-YAH", we said 'to heck with it, let's go with HOOAH' ... thanks Army ... HOOAH!" - CombatCritic

So glad we made it here. Make reservations because there is extremely limited seating.

My husband is quite the picky eater so I was nervous about taking him here. If he could have chicken breast and baked ziti every day he would.. we ordered the prefix menus (one €16 and one €26 for two and we shared) which you get to choose from the options. In total we ordered: the onion tart (served hot with a side of salad), the lyonnaise traditional starter of cold meat salads and lentils, the fish soufflé, tripe stew, cheese dessert, and two dessert tarts. If I went into detail about every single dish we had the pleasure of indulging in, this might be the longest help review every.. it's safe to say that everything we ordered was superbly made, served properly the cold items were cold and the hot were piping hot. These are great for sharing and you will be totally stuffed.

Photos do not do it justice. I'm not gonna lie, it was the excited and passionate reviews that persuaded us to try this fine restaurant, the photos were not really impressing me. Once you are dining in, you can smell everything and see the steam dancing, you can feel the textures of the sauces and food.

If you see my dessert photo, the slices look totally unexciting, when you bite into it though, it's totally unique and delicious.

Everything here is homemade. The menu is only in french however our two servers, who were so sweet and helpful, they spoke great English and made fine suggestions and were even able to understand how picky my husband is and arrange around that.

Expert tips: call ahead and make reservations for 7 or 19:00 because everyone pours in at 7 and will be dining for at least 1.5 hours. Call at least a day in advance for reservations Monday - Friday, a week or so in advance for Friday and Saturday. We dined in on a Wednesday night at 7, made reservations the night before. Be sure to walk in right at 6:55 because this place is popular and I'm sure if you don't arrive on time for your reservation they will probably give it away. If you cannot finish the dessert ask for aluminum tin foil and you can wrap it and take it home.

Local Lyonnaise food. Friendly service. One of the servers had very good English, the other had English about as good as our French, which is barely passable. None-the-less we managed fine and enjoyed a local chicken liver pate entree, a salad Lyonnaise and a quenelle mains, and a almond tart n the most amazing pink color.

Lyonnaise food features a lot of organ meats, so be sure you know what you are ordering if you are squeamish.

The pate was served with a nice tomato based sauce which completed it nicely.

The quenelle was served in a very rich seafood sauce and accompanied by a large portion of Lyonnaise potato's. Very filling.

The salad Lyonnaise was a moderate amount of greens buried in fried bread croutons, crispy thick cut bacon, and a couple of lightly poached eggs. The warm eggs and toppings and the cool greens made a tasty and filling combination.

We finished up with espresso and an almond tart. It was delicious, but really hard to eat because of the tough crust which was difficult to cut with the small sounds provided. Despite that quibble it was worth the effort it too to eat.

The recommended wines by the glass were good and quite reasonable. In fact the whole meal was comparatively cheap at only a little over 50 euros for two.

Hey you're in Lyon so you might as well have some old-school Lyonnaise food. I'm talking very old school...

What I'll say is we're glad we tried it. And we actually really enjoyed the Lyonnaise salad and the quenelle (very, very tasty). But really it's one of those things where we can say we had it... and we're not likely to ever have it again.

Then again, never say never...

This place is a lovely local place - they serve only Lyonnaise cuisine and no English menu, naturally - but the waitress took time to explain things to us and were very patient although I was hopeless with French. We came here for late lunch so we got table immediately but this place is very popular so you might consider to book a table.

I had a quenelle while my boyfriend got andouilette, both Lyonnaise specialty and we loved them. We split a bottle of red for lunch and everything was just perfect.

A tip: Make sure you know all the specialty cuisine they do, so you wouldn't take a long time to decide like I did, a total amateur - also in the language :P