Le Tiroir: A Lyon Bistro with a Michelin Bib Gourmand
Restaurant doors in Lyon read like a guidebook: stars, award years, stickers. On its own, Le Tiroir has the round Michelin man licking his lips - and one misconception follows him around, one that half the tourists share: that the Bib Gourmand is a kind of half star. It isn't. Michelin inspectors use it to mark a category all its own: kitchens where you can eat brilliantly without the bill needing a paragraph to itself.
Le Tiroir is a modern bistro in the Vaise district in the northwest of Lyon, and it plays that game with both a lunch and a dinner menu of contemporary French cooking - it has kept Bibendum on its door since 2021.
What's Hiding in the Drawer
Tiroir means drawer, and the place has its own story to go with the name: Rémi Charvet, the owner who looks after the wine at the bistro, is said to keep bottles that never make the list hidden in drawers and to pull them out for guests like treasures. The explanation comes from the restaurant's own website, so trust it the way you trust a sommelier praising his own cellar. The rest is documented more soberly: two friends opened the bistro in December 2016 after coming back from Réunion, after spending six months rebuilding the space on Grande rue de Vaise, and the kitchen is now run by chef Emmanuel Decloitre. The menu changes with the seasons and is rewritten regularly.
The District That Made Pasta and Light Bulbs
Vaise sits on the right bank of the Saône in the ninth arrondissement, and not so long ago the Michelin man would have looked like a typo here. This was a working-class district: textile fibers from Rhodiacéta, light bulbs from the Claude factory and the famous Rivoire et Carret pasta. When the factories closed in the seventies, the district went into decline; since the turn of the millennium it has been changing, and today half of Grande rue de Vaise is pedestrianized, lined with bookshops, wine shops and delicatessens. Rents are rising at a pace that mostly delights the estate agents.
Don't confuse Le Tiroir with traditional Lyon dining. The bouchon, the famous Lyon eatery with checkered tablecloths, grew out of the mâchon - the hearty mid-morning meal of the silk weavers - and to this day it serves sausages and coq au vin under the eye of a certifying association. Le Tiroir belongs to a younger layer that the French call bistronomy: fine-dining ambition in a bistro format and at bistro prices. Alongside Michelin, that layer is watched over by the Gault & Millau guide as well, and Lyon has plenty of them - besides Le Tiroir I've tried La Table 101, for one.
The Four-Four-Four Lunch Menu
The lunch menu runs to roughly four starters, four mains and four desserts; out of those you put together two courses for 20 EUR, or three for 25 EUR. In Lyon that is neither suspiciously cheap nor over the top - bistro lunch menus here normally go for between 16 and 25 EUR. The difference is in what arrives on the plate. The set lunch back home in Czechia teaches you that a quick meal means low expectations; here you pay about the same, but the kitchen treats you like a dinner guest. It fills up at midday; without a reservation, come outside peak hours.
A Friday Lunch on Grande rue de Vaise
My lunch at Le Tiroir went like this: a Friday, every table taken, and staff who still found a moment between tables to apologize for their English, even though they managed perfectly well in it, quickly and happily. Of the starters, the runaway winner at our table was the fried ball of pungent Saint-Marcellin with spinach - a bold, outstanding flavor. The beef flank steak - a French menu would call it bavette - arrived tender, with a celeriac and horseradish purée with peanuts and a parmesan crisp; I'd never have put that combination together at home, but it went with the meat. The rhubarb dessert with hibiscus ice cream, whipped cream cheese and almond crumble disappeared off the plate almost instantly. With it, a bottle of Chapeau Melon 2020 from Jérémie Huchet, one of the cheapest on a wine list that starts at around 20 EUR - no secret drawer required. The three-course menu cost 25 EUR. I left thinking this drawer is worth opening a second time.
Le Tiroir
