Restaurant Fillioux in Lyon, 1927, Silver Gelatin Black & White Photography

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Description

A unique original silver gelatin black and white photography, The Restaurant "A La Mere Fillioux", in Lyon, France, March 1927.
… Read more A unique original silver gelatin black and white photography, The Restaurant "A La Mere Fillioux", in Lyon, France, March 1927.
A view of the facade of the famous Fillioux Restaurant in Lyon in 1927.
Features:
Original Silver Gelatin Print Photography Unframed.
Press Photography.
Press Agency: Anonymous.
Photographer: Anonymous.
Title: Restaurant Fillioux in Lyon, France, March 1927.
Provenance: Private collection.
Image Size: 4.13 in. high (10.5 cm) x 6.54 in. wide (16.6 cm) - Archivally matted in a 17 x 13 mat.
The piece will be shipped in a mat (17 x 13 in.) that fits a standard-sized frame.
No ink stamp, no legend.

About:
Françoise Fillioux (or Filloux), (2 September 1865 – 22 October 1925), known as "La Mère Fillioux" or "La Mère Filloux", was a French chef, proprietor of a famous restaurant in Lyon. Among her successors was Eugénie Brazier who worked in her kitchen as a young woman and continued her traditions of Lyonnaise cookery.
Françoise was born Benoîte Fayolle, on 2 September 1865 in the commune of Auzelles, in the Auvergne, into a large family. She went to work, first in Grenoble and then in Lyon, in bourgeois houses, including that of Gaston Eymard, a director of an insurance company and a dedicated gastronome. There, over the following ten years, she learned to cook to a high standard.
She married Louis Fillioux, whose father owned a building in the center of Lyon. The couple opened a bistro there. From modest beginnings it became nationally, and to some extent internationally, famous. In a tribute published after her death, La Tribune asked rhetorically, "Who is the traveler, who is the tourist, who did not know La Mère Filloux in Lyon?".
"It looked like the original bistro … the parquet floors, tables, plates, and linen showed no refinement. But what was served there was such that no foreigner would have failed to make the pilgrimage to this distant quarter. Especially at the time of the "fairs", it was impossible to find a place there. The originality of the house was … to serve the same menu continuously since its opening. Each dish on this menu included truffles in its preparation. The soup was full of them: a very strong consommé, of which a huge terrine was placed on each table. Then came truffled dumplings, served directly as soon as they came out of the oven, still steaming and giving off an exquisite fragrance."
The menu varied more than the paper suggests – it included hors d'oeuvre of ham, sausage, and galantine, quenelles au gratin with crayfish butter, and game in season.
Fillioux became famous for her main course: "volaille truffée demi-deuil" (truffled chicken in half-mourning). The dish consisted of a Bresse chicken poached in chicken stock, with slices of black truffle inserted under the skin. (When it was cooked, the truffle showed through the white skin of the chicken so that the overall appearance was black-and-white; hence the name). Fillioux would carve the chickens at the table, using only an ordinary table knife, a piece of culinary showmanship later practiced by Eugénie Brazier, who trained under her.
After the chicken came to the artichoke hearts with melted butter, on a large truffle base. The meal would conclude with pâtisserie, cheese, or fruit.
In 1924, a year before Fillioux's death, the influential food writer Curnonsky, France's "Prince of Gastronomy", wrote, "She is as famous as Marechal Foch, Anatole France, Kipling, Chaplin, and Mistinguett. She is a great star and also a lovable Frenchwoman, one of the greatest cooks on earth".
(Credit: Wikipedia) See less