54 RUE CENTRALE – Press, Literature & Lyonnaise Gastronomy

An original narrative, previously unpublished focus pieces, colourful and endearing characters, twenty years between war and peace — this is what the pages of this work offer: a Lyonnaise story seen through the prism of the adventures and tribulations of a number of highly original protagonists: journalists, authors, artists, entertainers and gastronomes, among them Marcel Grancher the master of ceremonies of this book, Frédéric Dard who had not yet become Commissaire San Antonio, Curnonsky the elected prince of gastronomes, Max André Dazergues the Lyonnaise Simenon, Marcel Veyre the medium of the smuggler Louis Mandrin and incidentally the "master of justice" of the Order of the Solar Temple, Gaston Simonet the Ragueneau of the Hôtel Jutard, Pierre Scize the great reporter and judicial chronicler, and many more besides...

Beyond an intense literary activity, we find here the atmosphere of the bistros, bars and restaurants, large and small, that animated every neighbourhood of Lyon — so many places of conviviality, encounter, exchange and cultural and gastronomic events. This story takes place in the early 1930s in Lyon, unfolding over ten years of peace laden with menace, five years of war and five more of recovered freedom. It will reach its conclusion at the dawn of the 1950s: it was yesterday. It was in the last century.