The Guide to Where to Eat Guts in France is simple.\u00a0
Everywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Guide to Where I Ate Guts in France is only a few places long. After all, I\u2019m 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\u2019s just a curiosity. I don\u2019t consider it a morbid curiosity, though it may appear that way too. I want to taste the world. There\u2019s a lot of history and culture between the nose and tail of various animals.\u00a0<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n In France<\/strong>, like plenty of countries, eating offal is regular, or at least mor<\/em>e regular. I\u2019m 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 ph\u1edf in Oakland. Cabeza, tripa, buche, and lengua<\/em> are common at every Mexican restaurant and taco truck I grew up with. The questions of what is \u201cregular\u201d and what is \u201cAmerican\u201d are broad and baked into the fabric of this column. Given today\u2019s climate, it\u2019s 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\u2019s just say I didn\u2019t 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<\/em> and filet mignon <\/em>might appear pre-packaged, bloodless and clean, but the livers, kidneys, and hearts next to them remind you that yes, these animals had lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout the history of the world, wasting organs is stranger than eating them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s where it goes. Well, went. Because of tariffs, China is importing more offal from Brazil<\/a> these days, but you get the idea. Money makes the meat spin. <\/mark>It\u2019s a twisted business. You can\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s Common Agricultural Policy <\/a>(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\u2019t unique in its use of guts, every culture that eats meat has recipes for offal, the market handles the rest. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sorry, I digress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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, \u201cI enter unwashed into a world that I disrespect despite my values.\u201d I am a pleasure seeker and a pessimist, a hopeless cynic and a paranoid. To quote Spider Jerusalem from the Warren Ellis comic Transmetropolitan<\/em>, \u201cA paranoid is simply someone in possession of all the facts.\u201d I don\u2019t have all the facts, but I have enough of them to foresee vegetarianism in my future. For now, I am an omnivorous gastronomer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I treat eating on vacation like it\u2019s my job because I wish it was<\/mark>. 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\u2019t 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\u2019m hoping these words, like an Irish veal brain in France, will fetch me a fair price. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On a trip to Lyon last year I spied numerous menus that were at least 50% organ meat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Liver, obviously, but kidneys, head, brain, and tripe too. Some of these menus I sought out, some of them I didn\u2019t have to. Andouillettes <\/em>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\u2019t know what an andouillette is, apologies, and thank you for being here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/mark> 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\u2019s reminiscent of shit because it usually contains part of an animal colon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I am, of course, enamored. How much andouillette can one man eat? I was fucking around and trying to find out. It\u2019s 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<\/em> (Friendly Association of Lovers of Authentic Andouillette) was formed by food critics in the 1950\u2019s and still gives out AAAAA ratings to andouillette producers today. They don\u2019t 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<\/strong><\/a> in the Paul Bocuse Market<\/strong>. I cooked them at home and they contained a little confit duck meat along with veal tripe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But on to the restaurants already. That\u2019s what you\u2019re here for right? Lyon was the offal-y highlight of the trip but I\u2019ve thrown in a few favorites from Dijon and Paris too. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n The third largest city in France, it feels infinitely more livable than Paris. What does livable mean these days? A place where it\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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 meuni\u00e8re<\/em>, 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<\/mark>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve only been to Lyon twice but I\u2019ve 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<\/mark>. 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\u2019s their birthday, about every 10 minutes. The staff is full of pros and those who want to be pros. Our waiter said he\u2019s worked there for twenty years. The andouillette served here is from Bobosse and has a AAAAA rating.\u00a0 The waiter told us he didn\u2019t speak English because he didn\u2019t 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\u2019ve ever seen here!\u00a0<\/mark> This place was packed on a rainy day. The ph\u1edf was excellent and so was the fried tripe. If I lived in Lyon I would be a regular here<\/mark>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the prettiest cities I\u2019ve 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\u2019s first and second apartments, both unmarked, just to feel something. It\u2019s easy to see why this town awakened the cook in her, there\u2019s food everywhere. That, and it\u2019s the first place she had her own kitchen.\u00a0 The three course menu at this Bib Gourmand restaurant came straight from the nearby market. I don\u2019t remember what we ate and I didn\u2019t take pictures, but I do remember it hit all the notes you could want from a French meal besides veal brain<\/mark>.\u00a0 \u201cNuage\u201d 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<\/mark>.\u00a0 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What can I really say about Paris? There\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Not the place to take picky eaters, but I did it anyway<\/mark>. The Norwegian psychologist we were dining with was shocked by the poached veal brain I ordered and wouldn\u2019t try that or the boudin noir wontons<\/em> 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\u2019t.\u00a0 This might have been my proudest moment of the trip, because we impressed our waiter.\u00a0 We ordered sichuan beef, ginger shrimp, and tripe with peppers<\/mark>. 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.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t 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<\/mark>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Guide to Where to Eat Guts in France is simple.\u00a0Everywhere.\u00a0 The Guide to Where I Ate Guts in France is only a few places long. After all, I\u2019m only one man. 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LE GARET <\/strong>\u2013 7 Rue du Garet, 69001 Lyon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
BRASSERIE GEORGES<\/strong> <\/a>\u2013 30 Cr de Verdun Perrache, 69002 Lyon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LE BISTROT ABEL<\/a> <\/strong>\u2013 49 Rue de la Bourse 47, 69002 Lyon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
PHO 69<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 15 Rue d’Aguesseau, 69007 Lyon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nD<\/strong>ijon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
SPICA<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 48 Rue de la Pr\u00e9fecture, 21000 Dijon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
NUAGE COCKTAIL BAR<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 35 Pl. Bossuet, 21000 Dijon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LE CAVE SE REBIFFE<\/strong> <\/a>\u2013 57 Rue Vannerie, 21000 Dijon, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nParis\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
LE SERVAN<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 32 Rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
LE LAC DE L\u2019OUEST<\/strong> \u2013 7 rue Volta, 75003 Paris France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
AMARANTE<\/strong> <\/a>\u2013 4 Rue Biscornet, 75012 Paris, France<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n