Immaculate plumage, steel-blue feet, scarlet comb: beneath the vaults of Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, our poulterers watch over the only poultry in the world crowned with an AOP. An encounter with excellence.
There is a bird that chefs the world over fight to obtain, and whose guardianship Lyon proudly claims: Bresse poultry. The only one in the world to carry both the AOC, granted in 1957 under the presidency of René Coty, and the European AOP secured in 1996, it embodies an exceptional terroir straddling the Ain, the Saône-et-Loire and a fringe of the Jura. Entirely white plumage, slender feet of a deep blue, a comb of vivid red: its three colours form something like a flag of gastronomy.
At Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, the poulterers are its natural ambassadors. At Volailles Clugnet, run by the Bastin family since 1994, the full range of Bresse poultry is handled in the strictest respect of the appellation, from chicken to poularde, from capon to the famous turkey. Behind the counter, the advice flows freely: which cut for a family Sunday, which cooking method to reveal that pearly, melting flesh that made the worldwide fame of the "belly of Lyon".
For behind each bird lies a patient know-how, often passed down from mother to daughter: selection of chicks, free-range rearing on vast grassy runs, finishing on cereals and milk. Each December, this labour culminates in the Glorieuses de Bresse, a prestigious contest born in 1862, where the finest birds, wrapped in a delicate cloth sewn like a corset, vie for the Grands Prix of Honour and the famous Sèvres vase offered by the Presidency of the Republic.
To come to Les Halles to choose your Bresse poultry is to touch a living heritage. A gourmet's gesture, and a tribute to Monsieur Paul, who loved nothing more than to magnify this jewel of our countryside.