Cook and Visit LYON 2025

 


5 Days of Guided Visits and Cooking Classes

The building blocks


Hands-On Cooking Classes at Plum

Lyon, France


France's Culinary Capital and So Much More

A Five Day Immersive French Culinary Discovery


HISTORY, VISITS, COOKING, all in a SMALL GROUP

Seasonal Classes, Hands On Cooking


Learn what Makes LYON, FRANCE the Culinary Capital

see dates and sign up for PLUM'S Seasonal 5-DAY sessions

Limited to 6 students per session

About Plum's immersive program


 

Plum Lyon is your home base. Small, hands-on cooking classes at Plum: In the kitchen, we roll up our sleeves for an immersive discovery of the building blocks of French cuisine. 

 

Lyon is your oyster. The program includes morning visits with Lucy to a variety of local venues to consult with experts, sample, explore, and gather both information and ingredients for our cooking classes.  Discover the essence of what makes Lyon France's culinary capital from an insider who has lived and worked in the city for 25 years. 

 


 

During your 5 day+ program (an optional Monday evening introductory meeting plus 5 full days of visits and classes through Saturday evening), we master technique and progressive building blocks of classic French cuisine over several days.  Five days of guided visits in Lyon and cooking classes, including multi-day preparation of regional and classic French cuisine.

 


 

IN ADDITION TO COOKING TOGEHTER AT PLUM, Each immersive culinary PROGRAM ALSO includes:  

 

-Exploration of Lyon's culinary history and gastronomic landscape with Lucy, to reveal the delightful unique aspects of what makes La Cuisine Lyonnaise unique, from old school to new. 

-Visits to multiple iconic markets and culinary venues, in addition to historical sites and consultation with industry experts in the storied city of Lyon.  

 


 

Each day is carefully planned with guided visits and cooking classes, and Lucy is available to help you at every step of the way. This multi-day series is designed to cover seasonal cuisine, and build culinary skills progressively.  It is appropriate for all levels of cook, from very beginners to experienced culinary enthusiasts.  The only pre-requisite is your love for French cuisine and desire to go in depth with an expert for a gastronomy-oriented visit to Lyon.  

Worshops at Plum are overlapped, and broken down over several days to provide a rich and varied schedule, with the possibility to enjoy all of the fruits of your labor at Plum.  

 


 

What is included when you sign up...

Days replete with cooking classes and workshops at Plum, excursions around the city with Lucy, and guidance for the full 5 days: where to stay, shop, and visit to get the most of your time in Lyon.

+ Registered Participants get a list of nearby lodging options all within a 5 minute walking distance to the kitchen.

+ Lucy's bonnes adresses for dining and other activities in Lyon is also provided, to assist with your plans outside of class!  

+ Full Recipes for everything we cook in class, and a Plum Lyon Bullet Journal with a premium set of pens for recording your personal experience.

What's not included... Transport to and from Lyon, lodging, your evening meals and activities.  

 


 

SMALL GROUP!  

 

+ This program is limited to 6 PARTICIPANTS ONLY per monthly session to allow small hands-on classes, attention, and instruction, and allow us discreet access to a wider range of activities.

 


 

DISCOUNTS in 2025!

 

  • 20% off total price if two people register together 
  • 25% off total price if three people register together
  • 30% off total price if 4-6 people register together

 

PLUM Alumni!  YOU receive a 30% discount if you sign up before 31 December 2024!

(Alumni and group discounts are non-cumulative, contact Lucy for the codes!)

 


 

Please note:  If you have trouble walking or standing, have a severe allergy, or follow a medically imposed dietary restriction, please contact us to find out about the possibility of a private program that caters to your requirements.

 


 

About Plum Lyon: The Plum Lyon Kitchen welcomes you to come and cook in Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France. Located in the ancient silk-worker's district on the hill of the Croix Rousse, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Plum Lyon Teaching Kitchen is offering seasonal market classes, classic French cooking, week-long immersive programs, children's workshops in English, and single subject ateliers that cover a chosen technique or theme in French cuisine. We accommodate a maximum of 6-8 students per class. There is plenty of opportunity for hands-on learning in our classes. 

 


 

Lucy Vanel is a professionally trained and certified French chef, and has been teaching the culinary arts since 2007.  Holding both French and American citizenship her passion for la cuisine lyonnaise and la cuisine française has ruled her every waking moment (and sometimes her dreams) since she moved to Lyon from Los Angeles in the year 2000.  Lucy has enthusiastically transmitted her knowledge and expertise to thousands of students through half-day and one-day workshops, and in 2025, the 5 day programs will begin!  She has created these Immersive French Culinary workshops with the goal of offering Plum's curriculum to provide a deeper, longer, more immersive experience in the gastronomic landscape of Lyon, and include multi-day preparations to progressively teach more of the building blocks of classic French and regional cuisine than any one-day workshop could ever cover.  If you enjoyed Lucy's Market Table Classes, you will love your week at Plum!  

 

 

A note from Lucy

From Lucy's KItchen Notebook

Cheese Pigrimmage, Thones

Driving up towards Bourg-en-Bresse and then hanging a left at Nantua, we cruise by the small roads into the Savoie region and visit with friends in Thônes, about 20 minutes outside of Annecy.

Our first stop in town is to the co-op, where they sell the cheeses from surrounding producers including all locally produced Reblochon, Raclette, Abondance, Beaufort, Tommes of various sizes and kinds, and one of the rare pressed goat milk tommes called the Chevrotin. We find their cheeses on display in their shop where the cave is built right into the rock with cheese stacked on old wood shelving in a controlled environment, the shelves visible through glass walls.

What is a Tomme de Savoie? This cheese is not standardized by AOC because there are so many hundreds of producers each with their own methods, although it is certified as coming from the Savoie region with its own special mark. The Tomme is the Alpine mountain cheese that has the longest history of any of the uncooked Savoie cheeses, historically made from small quantities by the milk farmers with their leftover milk. The cheese for the Tomme is coming from the milk of the Tarine and Abondance (see photo above) cows that dot the countryside of the region.

Nowadays in any grocery store in France, you can get some really forgettable industrial tommes with catchy names implying they come from Savoie. More often than not, they come from big city suburban factories that make absolutely no distinction in the origin, i.e. the cows, that produce the milk that gives way to these cheeses. Lowest price wins, don't care what they're fed, when and how, and the cheese, well, not so interesting.

On the other hand, when you are in the Savoie and happen upon the really good stuff that's been properly made and handled and aged in the right caves, you will be doing yourself a great favor to note the name and place of the producer, ask questions, and appreciate it. You will find that the best examples of this cheese can really be outstanding. A return visit will work its way into your itinerary the next time you pass through the town where you had it the last time - simple. Little by little you will locate the best cheeses and little by little you will be able to tell the difference, and judge.

At the co-op in Thônes, the local farmers have several novel variations on the Tomme theme on offer, one of which I fell in love with, the Tomme au Fenouil. The fennel grains impart such a beautiful flavor and this also adds some interest to the cheese plate. 

 

From Lucy's Kitchen Notebook

Lyon 2ème: Ampère Victor Hugo

Plunge down the presqu'ile three subway stops down the line from Hotel de Ville and step out onto the cobblestone there. Not as young and eclectic as La Martiniere, but with a steady Mary-Janes and lipstick style charm, Ampère Victor Hugo is replete with gourmandise. Get off rue Victor Hugo and get lost in the details.

The lion's gate!  How fitting!  

Ampère Victor Hugo is the city's center for antique trade and has begun to flourish into a bustling desirable place to live. It is teeming with a classic warm teahouse flair, while at the same time maintaining its identity as a historical center for the art of interior decoration, Lyonnais style. Many of the antique shops from the original quartier are going strong, but a careful eye spots chic fashion boutiques for the prim high-maintenance stay at home moms looking for that creative touch. Craft shops bloom like fragile wildflowers, with knitting and patchwork clubs regularly gathering in creative ateliers, while the antique elite hold their own in their long established trading houses. A sprinkling of cherished mom and pop toy and game boutiques forge their anchor-like presence on corners here and there. The one-lane thoroughfares are narrow and the architecture dates to the Belle Epoch, so naturally the light is soft and shadows manage to dominate just about everywhere along the small canyon-like side streets. All the more to draw you in with little nests of warmth, my dear.

Shut the door behind you when you come in,

From Lucy's Kitchen Notebook

Lyon 2ème, la croix rousse

25 years ago, when I did my initial exploring of the neighborhoods, I found myself particularly in love with the lore of La Croix Rousse. The area was not urbanized until rather late in Lyon's history, during the first half of the 1800s. Originating as private church property, after the Revolution, green rolling orchards, vineyards and walled monestary vegetable gardens were transformed into a concentrated public urban center for the newly industrialized burgeoning silk production in Lyon. Over a period of 50 years the construction of homes and workshops for 28,000 master craftsmen, workers, and their families was completed. The silk working industry, which had been segmented and dispersed throughout the city for centuries, centralized to form a community.
 

Find fresh chicory and endives at the Marché de la Croix Rousse

This enclave of master surface pattern artists, thread workers, technicians specializing in loom maintenance, the weavers themselves, came to live and work together in a rather contained community. With new technology invented by a Lyonnais named Jacquard, Lyon produced silk was the official supplier to Napoleon's public palace works and to the courts. This dense community of interdependent like-minded craftsmen and their eventual organization to look out for each other, fight for their rights, ability to unionize under difficult conditions and live a co-op centered lifestyle, not only gave birth to one of the most progressive social movements in Europe at the time, but would also institutionalize a unique style of cuisine - one that made an important statement - and leave a lasting mark on Lyon's gastronomic identity.

Looking back down the hill on the way up to La Croix Rousse...

In a genre of dishes unique to Lyon, ones that had their own histories with the people but came to be staples in the workers canteens, the cuisine embodied an allegiance to the working class by remaining simple, rustic and firmly based in the local economy. This style of charcuterie production and cooking would eventually co-exist and intermingle with La Cuisine Bourgeois, which had its own parallel establishment in Lyon. The dense new urban working class community and their tastes made it easy for the establishment to embrace a conduit, a special environment where the upper crust could enjoy, even if precariously, the earthly delights of the best of both worlds. This marriage would eventually be served forth pat and parcel by Les Mères Lyonnaises; their offering added a layer of dimension to the gastronomic landscape quite unique to this city. One that would open doors, if only in principle, for a flowering of ideas that was destined, through events here in Lyon, to change the face of French cuisine forever.