Set course for Afropean cuisine

After making room for cuisines from the Mediterranean region, Asia, South America and the Middle East, brasseries, bouchons and other traditional Lyonnais restaurants have recently broadenend their horizons once again, as they welcome a newcomer to the fold: Afropean cuisine.

© Ed. La Martinière

"This cuisine is represented by a new gneration of highly talented chefs, who are pulling away froma traditions, both African and French, to create their cuisine" told us Vérane Frédiani, journalist, film director and author of L'Afrique cuisine en France published by Editions de La Martinière. Filled with stories and recipes, this book deliciously documents "the richness of French society through the diversity and multiculturalism of its cuisine".

First stop: Lyon, the adoptive city of Mauritanian chef Jules Niang. At the helm of the Petit Ogre restaurant for the past ten years, he is delighted by the booming interest in African culture. He draws an amusing parallel between the ‘Mère Lyonnaises’ [female cooks who were pioneers of Lyonnaise cuisine] and the ‘Mères Sadio’, as he calls them: “In Africa, cooking is the business of mothers, who demonstrate their ingenuity when it comes to feeding large families. As for the Mères Lyonnaises, they used ordinary ingredients, like pike and cardoon, to come up with dishes that went down in history. These women share the same creativity.”

Breaking free from the past

Self-taught, Jules Niang stands at the forefront of the “Afropean” movement alongside figures like Mory Sacko and Georgina Viou, who both worked in television before becoming Michelin-starred chefs. Mory has created four farms and a restaurant in Mauritania and Senegal. This is his way of contributing to the development of catering on the African continent. “The chefs of African origin who are creating a buzz in France are those who have pushed beyond the boundaries of technique. Only then can they explore creativity, sensitivity and renewal.” Things are moving already. “In Lyon, it’s becoming popularised in a similar way to what happened with Asian cuisine. So we’re seeing new places pop-up, like La Cuisine de Moudéry, a streetfood restaurant that just opened in Tassin-la-Demi-Lune, following its success in Villeurbanne,” emphasised Isabelle Thiollière-Hort, creator of Wassaï.

African cuisine or cuisines?

One crucial point remains: how to get to grips with the concept of a continent-wide cuisine that includes 54 countries and many more regional varieties? Jules Niang has a view on this: “Rather than focussing on the differences from one country to the next, we need to look at what unites us. There are shared characteristics that we could highlight, similarly to what the Scandinavians have done with Nordic cuisine. There is the way meals are served for instance. Whether you’re in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire or Senegal, the dish is placed in the centre of the table for everyone to share. Then there are the cereals, which are widely used on the continent along with all kinds of vegetables and leaves. The plant-protein balance is very different to Europe.” You would be hard-pressed to find an approach that is more in phase with current ideas. Afropean cuisine has a bright future ahead of it.

Adress book

Petit Paÿs

You'll find crips, sweets, sauces and dried fruits at this welle-stocked little deli, but our favorite is the revisited ham sandwich, with turkey ham, combava butter, Creole sauce and mango-vinegar pickles.

Lyon Dakar
 

Founded in 2001, this is one of the longest-established African restaurants in Lyon. It serves delicacies such as kebabs, accras, thieboudienne, sea bream yassa, and beef or chicken mafé. Let yourself be guided by the owner, the charming Samy. And don’t even try to resist the temptation of the baked bananas or a glass of rum, another of the restaurant’s specialities

© Laura Favand

Wassaï
 

In Lyon’s first vegan and organic African café-patisserie, you’ll find gooey chocolate cakes made with cowpea flour, Senegalese peanut butter marble cake, and hibiscus or moringa powder cookies. Not to mention a few Lyon-based fledgling brands like Obosso (obosso-boisson.com), Maison Ahouë (maisonahoue.com) and superfoods by Keyaa (keyaasuperfoods.com). Exhibitions, workshops and live music.

Asmara 
 

At Samson Berhane’s restaurant, Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine is served in a ‘mesob’, a traditional basket filled with delicacies such as azifa (lentil mousse), doro (chicken in a spicy sauce), shiro (chickpea flour pastry with spices) and chogera machalyo, a tripe dish, as a tip of the hat to Lyonnaise cuisine. Rather than cutlery, the food is eaten using injera, a flatbread made with teff flour.

La Saint Louisienne 
 

Trained at Institut Paul Bocuse, and a former fledgling at the La Commune incubator, Awa Dieng Mobj delights the people of Lyon in her restaurant-lounge, voted best African restaurant in Lyon by Afro Gala Lyon. On the menu: goat’s cheese and mango puff pastry, chicken or beef mafé, yassa…

Petit Ogre 
 

One of the leaders of the fast-growing “Afro-bistronomic cuisine” movement, Jules Niang (also featured in A la lyonnaise No. 8) prefers a cuisine of contrasts to fusion: “To fuse is to subsume; I prefer emphasising the differences.” This approach gives rise to delicious offerings such as cream of squash, mashed potato with ginger, roasted walnuts, tamarind and shiso, and beef chuck cooked for seven hours with baobab jus. Don’t miss his range of condiments – Mäayo – made with his own ingredients grown in Africa.
15 RUE DE LA BANNIÈRE, LYON 3

© Petit Ogre

Petit Ogre

Bistro restaurant

15 rue de la Bannière - 69003 Lyon 3ème
04 78 60 28 93

www.petitogre.fr/

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Le Baca Bamba

© La Baca Bamba

Martin and Loris, aka ‘the Bamba Brothers’, have created their own take on the burger with a Cameroonian flavour. In the bun: French meat marinated with spices, along with plantain, cheddar and a choice of sauces (gado, sawa, kribienne…). You’ll also find bean doughnuts and rice in DG sauce. New this winter is a burger combining the tastes of Africa and Savoy: the ‘Rasta Raclette’