The most extraordinary food cities in Europe, from Paris and Bordeaux to Lyon, Bologna, Florence and Milan, lie along a continuous rail corridor between the Atlantic and the Adriatic. You can eat your way through all of them without once checking in for a flight. This is not a coincidence. European gastronomy developed along trade routes, and the train followed the same logic. The result is a journey that is simultaneously a history of how Europe learned to eat and a very pleasant ten days of doing so.
Paris: Where the Journey Starts
Begin at Le Train Bleu in the Gare de Lyon, one of the most beautiful restaurant rooms in the world, opened in 1901 and unchanged in all the ways that matter. Gilded ceilings, painted panels of the destinations served from this station, white tablecloths, and a menu that has not needed to be fashionable because it has always been correct. The sole meunière and the île flottante have been here longer than most of the guests' grandparents.
Paris itself needs no argument as a food city, but I find the most instructive meal is not the Michelin-starred dinner but the market lunch. The Marché d'Aligre on a Saturday morning, the permanent covered hall for cheese and charcuterie, the open-air section for vegetables and flowers, shows you exactly what the city eats when it is not performing for visitors.
Bordeaux: Learning to Read a Wine Label
The TGV from Paris to Bordeaux takes two hours and four minutes, the same time as a decent tasting menu. The wine city that results feels earned rather than rushed.
The Left Bank châteaux, Margaux, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, are not primarily tourist attractions, but several accept visits by appointment, and the experience of standing in the chai at a classified growth, surrounded by barrels in various stages of maturation, is educational in a way that no wine list can replicate. I recommend Château Léoville-Barton for its lack of pretension and the quality of its second wine, Sarget de Gruaud Larose, as a tasting reference point.
The restaurant scene in Bordeaux proper has improved substantially in the past decade. Le Pressoir d'Argent under Gordon Ramsay has the best cellar in the city; Le Chapon Fin is the grand old room worth visiting for the architecture as much as the food.
Lyon: The Reason French Cooking Is What It Is
Lyon is the meal that changes the journey. The city is France's gastronomic capital not because it has the most Michelin stars, though it has many, but because it has the bouchon tradition: small, unpretentious restaurants serving the food Lyonnais people actually eat. Quenelles de brochet. Salade lyonnaise. Tablier de sapeur. Tarte aux pralines. This is cooking that does not need fashion because it has conviction.
The Halles de Paul Bocuse, the covered food market named for the chef who defined modern French cuisine, is the best market I know for prepared food. The charcuterie counters alone justify the detour. The fromager, Mère Richard, sells Saint-Marcellin at a ripeness that no other city seems to find.
For dinner, I book Paul Bocuse's L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges once per culinary itinerary. It is expensive, theatrical, and deeply unfashionable in the way that only an institution sure of itself can afford to be. The VGE truffle soup is a cliché because it is extraordinary.
The Glacier Express Dining Car: Altitude and Appetite
The culinary journey takes an Alpine detour through Switzerland, through Geneva and up to Zermatt, then east on the Glacier Express toward St. Moritz. The dining car lunch on the Glacier Express is a three-course affair at altitude, crossing the Oberalp Pass at 2,033 metres, wine list open, the tilted soup plates doing their engineered best on mountain gradients. It is not the most complex meal on this itinerary. It is, unquestionably, the most unusually located.
Bologna: The True Capital of Italian Food
Bologna's nickname, La Grassa, the Fat, is affectionate and accurate. The city produces tortellini, mortadella, ragù bolognese (the real version, nothing like what appears in other countries under that name), and Parmigiano-Reggiano from the surrounding hills. The Quadrilatero, the old market quarter between Via Rizzoli and Piazza Maggiore, is the right way to spend a morning: small shops that have sold the same things in the same way for decades, the pasta shop where you can watch sfogline rolling pasta at six in the morning.
Dinner at Trattoria Anna Maria is mandatory. The tagliatelle al ragù is the standard against which everything else should be measured.
Florence: Market Cooking and Uffizi Afternoons
Florence is not primarily a food city in the way Bologna is, but the Mercato Centrale and the morning rhythm of the Sant'Ambrogio market give it a culinary life that the tourist trail misses entirely. I include a market-to-table cooking class with a local chef in every Alpina culinary itinerary, two hours in the market, two hours cooking, one very good lunch. It produces the kind of recipe knowledge that actually transfers home.
The bistecca alla Fiorentina at Buca Mario, the city's oldest restaurant (1886), is the right meat course after the Uffizi.
Milan: The Aperitivo and the End of the Journey
Milan ends the journey properly. The Milanese aperitivo. Campari or a Negroni, a spread of cured meats and small bites that functions as dinner's first act, is a civilisational achievement. The Navigli district at six in the evening, the canal-side bars filling with people in good coats having a drink before whatever comes next, is exactly the note on which a culinary journey through Europe should close.
The Peck delicatessen on Via Spadari, open since 1883, is the last purchase before the train home: a piece of aged Parmigiano, some 'nduja, a bottle of something from the Piedmont. The train from Milano Centrale back to Zurich takes three hours. The food holds until then.
This itinerary, Paris to Milan via Bordeaux, Lyon, the Glacier Express, Bologna and Florence, forms the basis of Alpina's Grand Culinary Rail Journey. If you would like to discuss dates, customise the route or ask about specific restaurants, the enquiry form is the right place to start.