The Times’ Carolyn Boyd visited Casson Mann’snew exhibition, Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie, in Lyon.
The permanent visitor experience, located in Lyon’s newly restored Grand Hotel-Dieu, explores the relationship between eating and wellbeing at the heart of French gastronomy and Lyonnaise sensibility.
It emphasises family dining, simple dishes and local produce, inviting visitors to engage with Lyon’s traditional food culture -past, present and future - through a series of thematic installations that combine objects and artefacts, brought to life with tactile props, audio visual, graphic and interactive elements.
“Florent Bonnetain, the Cité’s Director tells me the word museum suggests stuffy cabinets and two dimensional exhibits.
Having been created by the same team behind the bigger Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, set in it’s €80m swirling glass tower, this project is intended to inspire the same level of excitement”
“We learn how Lyon’s role as the country’s food capital began, thanks to the Mères de Lyons (mothers of Lyons), several generations of skilled female cooks, who date back to the mid-18th century. They were the city’s first celebrity chefs, the most famous being Mère Brazier, from whom Bocuse learnt his trade.”
Carolyn Boyd
“In the section entitled À Table, I sit at a dining table, where clips of some of France's most famous dining-table film scenes are projected.”
Carolyn Boyd