The Guide to Where to Eat Guts in France is simple.
Everywhere.
The Guide to Where I Ate Guts in France is only a few places long. After all, I’m only one man. It might appear that I have an endless, unquenchable thirst for brain matter, but despite a lifelong dream of being cast as a zombie in a Romero flick, it’s just a curiosity. I don’t consider it a morbid curiosity, though it may appear that way too. I want to taste the world. There’s a lot of history and culture between the nose and tail of various animals.
In France, like plenty of countries, eating offal is regular, or at least more regular. I’m using the US as comparison here, but that comes with a big asterisk. My dad grew up eating liver and onions in Texas, my first time eating tripe as a child was in a bowl of phở in Oakland. Cabeza, tripa, buche, and lengua are common at every Mexican restaurant and taco truck I grew up with. The questions of what is “regular” and what is “American” are broad and baked into the fabric of this column. Given today’s climate, it’s worth noting that California was Mexico before it was the US, and it was Native American land before it was that. Oakland belongs to everybody, fuck ICE, off top. Let’s just say I didn’t handle a lot of offal when I was bagging groceries at Safeway in Redwood Heights. And while France is on the way, they are not entirely divorced from their bloodlust the way US grocery stores so often are. Chateaubriand and filet mignon might appear pre-packaged, bloodless and clean, but the livers, kidneys, and hearts next to them remind you that yes, these animals had lives.
Throughout the history of the world, wasting organs is stranger than eating them.
Brain, heart, and liver used to be unique, scarce, singular delicacies. After all, animals only have one brain each. Scarcity meant saving it for someone special, er, wealthy. These days, modern industrial meat production has divorced us from this scarcity and the value of organs has toppled because of it. These days, offal gets shipped abroad from the US more often than not. Tongue fetches a higher price in Mexico and China than it does stateside, so that’s where it goes. Well, went. Because of tariffs, China is importing more offal from Brazil these days, but you get the idea. Money makes the meat spin. It’s a twisted business. You can’t even call it supply and demand, because there are still starving people and there are still companies getting rich off meat. Industrial slaughterhouses were not designed to stop world hunger, and if they were, well, they are doing a terrible job.
This thing called meat is bad for the world. From mono-cropping soy for animal feed to insane methane gas production, it significantly contributes to global warming, global inequality, and is generally cruel to laborers and animals. And while the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was designed to feed its member states in the face of post-war food shortages, it’s still very much a market. Sweetbreads, brains, and liver are worth more in the countries that value them, uh, no shit. France is one of those countries. Call it culinary tradition, cultural imperialism, soft power, whatever. France isn’t unique in its use of guts, every culture that eats meat has recipes for offal, the market handles the rest.
Sorry, I digress.
I am well aware of the cognitive dissonance at play. Knowing meat production is harming the planet and still eating tripe as often as I can is hypocritical. To flip a Paul Schrader quote, “I enter unwashed into a world that I disrespect despite my values.” I am a pleasure seeker and a pessimist, a hopeless cynic and a paranoid. To quote Spider Jerusalem from the Warren Ellis comic Transmetropolitan, “A paranoid is simply someone in possession of all the facts.” I don’t have all the facts, but I have enough of them to foresee vegetarianism in my future. For now, I am an omnivorous gastronomer.
I treat eating on vacation like it’s my job because I wish it was. I do hope to make a living off this someday, so here I am writing a restaurant guide. Despite loving restaurants, restaurant people, and deriving great pleasure from cardiovascular tissue, my heart isn’t all the way in it. Still, I can hold two ideas in my head at once, just like I can write about them. Stringing words together is about all I can do that has any value, but just like offal, that value is market dependent. I guess I’m hoping these words, like an Irish veal brain in France, will fetch me a fair price.
On a trip to Lyon last year I spied numerous menus that were at least 50% organ meat.
Liver, obviously, but kidneys, head, brain, and tripe too. Some of these menus I sought out, some of them I didn’t have to. Andouillettes were on at every Lyonnais bouchon I visited. Sweetbreads were often the priciest dish. Being who I am, and coming from Slovenia where I rarely find offal on a menu, it was refreshing to see. Andouillettes house a huge fascination of mine. If you don’t know what an andouillette is, apologies, and thank you for being here.
An andouillette is a singularly French and naturally cased sausage painstakingly stuffed with layers and layers of intestine that dates back to the middle ages. It helped prevent the town of Troyes from being ransacked in 1580 by distracting an invading army with its delicious smell. Today its smell is not particularly well regarded. A lot of people think it’s reminiscent of shit because it usually contains part of an animal colon.
I am, of course, enamored. How much andouillette can one man eat? I was fucking around and trying to find out. It’s a lot, but not as much as I hoped. Over nine days in France, I ate 5, and quickly came to find out that not all andouillettes are created equal. They have a ratings association for a reason. In lieu of any EU geographic indication, the Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Andouillette Authentique (Friendly Association of Lovers of Authentic Andouillette) was formed by food critics in the 1950’s and still gives out AAAAA ratings to andouillette producers today. They don’t have any legal power but their rating system is used all over. Andouillettes are an acquired taste, but once acquired it creates devout followers. The best ones I had were from Charcuterie Bobosse in the Paul Bocuse Market. I cooked them at home and they contained a little confit duck meat along with veal tripe.
But on to the restaurants already. That’s what you’re here for right? Lyon was the offal-y highlight of the trip but I’ve thrown in a few favorites from Dijon and Paris too.
Lyon
The third largest city in France, it feels infinitely more livable than Paris. What does livable mean these days? A place where it’s OK to be broke? Lyon is approachable, charming and obsessed with its own cuisine, as it should be. Two rivers run through it. The Lyonnais are known to be kind. I wanted to eat everything.
LE GARET – 7 Rue du Garet, 69001 Lyon, France
Le Garet! A welcoming staff patiently waded through my bad French and brought us delicious food and wine. What more can you ask? I had cervelle d’agneau meunière, lamb brain fried in butter, and shared an asparagus and snail tart with my uncle. This was my favorite meal in the city. Make sure to book.
BRASSERIE GEORGES – 30 Cr de Verdun Perrache, 69002 Lyon, France
I’ve only been to Lyon twice but I’ve eaten at this almost 200-year-old brasserie three times. That should tell you something. It might be more ambience than food, but the food is great too. If a restaurant floor is a stage, this is my favorite type of show. A cavern of a place, the five-hundred person capacity dining room is a delicious spectacle. The lights get dim and a hand cranked music box plays over a candle lit dessert every time someone claims it’s their birthday, about every 10 minutes. The staff is full of pros and those who want to be pros. Our waiter said he’s worked there for twenty years. The andouillette served here is from Bobosse and has a AAAAA rating.
LE BISTROT ABEL – 49 Rue de la Bourse 47, 69002 Lyon, France
The waiter told us he didn’t speak English because he didn’t have to. Tourists rarely came to the restaurant, which is a nice sign for the self-loathing traveller. I had the biggest piece of sweetbread I’ve ever seen here!
PHO 69 – 15 Rue d’Aguesseau, 69007 Lyon, France
This place was packed on a rainy day. The phở was excellent and so was the fried tripe. If I lived in Lyon I would be a regular here.
Dijon
One of the prettiest cities I’ve ever been to, it was apparently untouched by the war. Walking through it is like walking through a museum. There is a gastronomy museum here that feels more like a market. I walked by M.F.K Fisher’s first and second apartments, both unmarked, just to feel something. It’s easy to see why this town awakened the cook in her, there’s food everywhere. That, and it’s the first place she had her own kitchen.
SPICA – 48 Rue de la Préfecture, 21000 Dijon, France
The three course menu at this Bib Gourmand restaurant came straight from the nearby market. I don’t remember what we ate and I didn’t take pictures, but I do remember it hit all the notes you could want from a French meal besides veal brain.
NUAGE COCKTAIL BAR – 35 Pl. Bossuet, 21000 Dijon, France
“Nuage” means cloud in French and the bar here is painted like the sky. My uncle had a gin that was made with local foraged herbs, nothing from more than 20km away, and he loved it. If you sit outside, the neighboring church will fill your eyes with just enough beauty to live in this ugly world a little while longer.
LE CAVE SE REBIFFE – 57 Rue Vannerie, 21000 Dijon, France
Had a drink at this talk-about-a-wine bar before a very disappointing meal across the street. I so desperately wish we had stayed. The barman was gracious, the vibe was neighborly, and the wine list extraordinary. In my drinking days I would have been here all night. I would have made friends.
Paris
What can I really say about Paris? There’s a million guides already. The restaurants I went to are extremely well traveled and extremely well deserved of their recognition. I am echoing a chorus. Still, do go. Every meal is your own.
LE SERVAN – 32 Rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris, France
Not the place to take picky eaters, but I did it anyway. The Norwegian psychologist we were dining with was shocked by the poached veal brain I ordered and wouldn’t try that or the boudin noir wontons the restaurant is known for. It feels strange to me that highly educated people can still be unwilling to try new things, but it shouldn’t.
LE LAC DE L’OUEST – 7 rue Volta, 75003 Paris France
This might have been my proudest moment of the trip, because we impressed our waiter. We ordered sichuan beef, ginger shrimp, and tripe with peppers. While paying he asked if I had eaten there before and how did I know exactly what to get? I told him chef Gareth Storey sent me.
AMARANTE – 4 Rue Biscornet, 75012 Paris, France
I didn’t make it this trip but I still think about the tripe I had here two years ago. Lunch is affordable, delicious, and generally contains offal.
