Lyon: The Pittsburgh of France?

After all, "yinz" is just Pittsburghese for "vous"

A lot of people really like Lyon. It’s known for its food scene in particular, apparently having been called (rather loftily) the “world capital of gastronomy” since 1935, at least according to the Alliance Française. Indeed, it has many Michelin starred restaurants, which is great if you’re into that sort of thing.

But while I love food and our travel itineraries are generally centered around where we’re going to eat next, I really don’t care much about fine dining. Our most memorable (complimentary) meals have been at pretty unassuming, well-regarded but not precious bistros, brasseries, wine bars, halles, and - now that I’ve visited Lyon - bouchons Lyonnais.

In contrast, the few times I’ve gone for Michelin-starred places have been memorable (derogatory) or more weird than anything. Plus, as it turns out, stuff I prefer not to eat predominates Lyonnais food: a dazzling array of porky sausages, tripe, things of that nature. Side note - I do enjoy the quenelle de brochet, despite first hearing ”quenelle” in reference to a vulgar, antisemitic gesture beloved by right-wingers of both the anti-muslim and islamist persuasions (of course)! It’s basically gefilte fish, but French. Anyway: we didn’t come to Lyon for the food.

I’ve also heard a lot of people comparing Lyon to Paris. To be fair, I have heard people comparing many French cities to Paris because, hey, they’re all French cities, right? But this seems to be a particularly common thing people say about Lyon.

Now, I’ve spent a pretty good amount of time in Paris and have visited much of it on foot. I probably know Paris better than I know any other city in the world with the exception of where I currently live. And let me just say: Lyon does not remind me of Paris, like, at all.

I don’t mean this in a bad way. Lyon is a fine city! It just reminds me of a different world-class, gastronomically respected city where I have also had the privilege of spending a lot of time:

Pittsburgh.

Okay, hear me out. There are of course many ways in which Lyon is NOT like Pittsburgh - for instance, like all French drivers, the Lyonnais do not routinely break well-accepted traffic norms or try to kill others on the road. The Lyonnais accent is not completely incomprehensible to outsiders. And yet!

• Topography. Lyon is geographically dramatic, situated at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône rivers, and the central part of the city is on a peninsula that comes to a point where the rivers join.

  

  Top: Lyon, France. Bottom: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  “But Pittsburgh has three rivers,” you say. Well, I also happen to be an Ohio denialist, and my skepticism extends to the so-called “Ohio River,” which is simply an extension of either the Allegheny or the Monongahela, whichever you prefer.
  
  So, like Pittsburgh, Lyon is situated in a valley, with steep hills rising above the center.

  

  Maybe it’s Oakland. Maybe it’s Croix Rousse.

  To shape this terrain into something humans can use, there are tunnels and funicular railways.

  

  Top: Lyon’s tunnel de la Croix Rousse. Bottom: Pittsburgh’s Liberty Tunnel.

  

  Top: Lyon funiculaire. Bottom: Pittsburgh incline.

  Sure, at the top of the funicular in Lyon is a well-preserved archeological site of the Roman city of Lugdunum, whereas Pittsburgh boasts a pretentious restaurant where people go for weddings and proms. Whatever. Future civilizations will visit the ruins of “Le Mont” and wonder why anyone paid good money to eat there.

  

  What remains of the Lugdunum amphitheatre, situated on a hill above present-day Lyon

  Also, at the top of that funicular, across from those Roman ruins, a museum was having an exhibit on Pittsburgh native son Andy Warhol. It seemed like a sign, no?

Really, it’s mostly the topography of Lyon and the way the city embraces it that reminds me of Pittsburgh, just like the, I dunno, presence of buildings and French people in Lyon reminds other people of Paris. But similar-looking rivers and hills don’t make for much of a Substack post, do they? So here are some others:

• Fried, innocuously-named offal dishes. I’ve spent a LOT of time learning the various words for french food, because there is a lot of it I just prefer not to eat. In Lyon, the “tablier de sapeur” (sapper’s apron) or “gnafron” is fried tripe; in Pennsylvania, “scrapple” is ground pork offal combined with oats and fried. Both names sound cute while not giving you any idea what you’re getting into, and many a naive soul has probably ordered either one of them by accident.

  

  Top: Tablier de sapeur. Bottom: Scrapple.

• Film. Lyon is for some reason associated with the French film industry, although am not exactly sure why. I think it has to do with the technology enabling photography and motion pictures, rather than film production itself (as to which the first companies were French - Gaumont and Pathé - but from Paris).

  
  Pittsburgh, like Lyon, also lacks any clear tie to the origins of its country’s film industry. But! It is considered the birthplace of the movie theatre and has since gone on to be the setting of classics such as the Night of the Living Dead series, Silence of the Lambs, Flashdance, and of course, the Bruce Willis / Sarah Jessica Parker romantic sizzler, Striking Distance. (On a personal note, The Perks of Being a Wallflower was written by my fellow high school alum Steve Chbosky, and the movie was filmed partly on the street where I lived in high school).

• War. Lyon was a hub of the French resistance against the perfidious Nazis during World War II. Less dramatically - but also important to the course of world events - Pittsburgh played a pivotal role in the French and Indian War against the perfidious British.

So - have you been to Lyon or Pittsburgh? Did one remind you of the other? Did Lyon remind you of Paris, and if so, how?