Eden Rock Café Lyon
68 Rue Mercière
Eden Rock Café is situated in the heart of the city and offers a selection of mainly burgers and fajitas in terms of food. However, the bar is also rather popular and on certain dates, there is also live music, hence the name Rock Café. It’s a bit like the well known franchise ‘Hard Rock Café’, but nowhere near as grand, but I guess that’s really the best way to describe it. The restaurant does actually sell their own souvenirs such as T-shirts too, should you wish to leave with a physical memory of the place.
I had previously attempted to go to Eden Rock café for a late lunch with a friend last week, only to be told that between the hours of about three to seven in the evening, the restaurant is shut and the café only offers drinks at its bar. A week later, a friend of mine was visiting from England and out of all the restaurants we had a look around that evening, this menu seems the most appealing; price wise and food wise.
The restaurant offers burgers, chips and a bit of a Tex-Mex selection. The prices vary depending on whether or not you with to have more or less of certain elements of the meal. For example, should one choose to have a burger, one can go for the simplest option of having the burger and nothing else, one can have the standard: burger, chips, salad and coleslaw or, in certain cases one cane even opt for more meat.
I found this quite a nice option for me as I’m not the biggest fan of chips and salads. Unfortunately for me, when I was ordering the size of food for my friend, who speaks little French, the waitress believed I wanted the same size meal for the two of us. There wasn’t much time to object, as once she took our order, she quickly hurried away. It wasn’t the end of the world, so I didn’t bother taking it further.
Most of the dishes are meat based, though there are handfuls of vegetarian dishes, such as the vegetable fajitas available for those who opt to be herbivores. I wouldn’t particularly say that there is an awful lot of choice on the menu, especially if you are a vegetarian, though that appears to be the case at most places in Lyon.
I ended up going for the fish burger with the tartar sauce and a slice of cheese, which is actually, my usual McDonalds order seeing as I don’t eat beef and I only go for chicken when it is the only convenient option. Though this burger was much better than that offered by the famous fast food chain, I didn’t find it all that great. The battered fish in the middle was a bit too much, and I’ve found myself going off of fish a bit. Whist the burger was ok, I’ve certainly had better elsewhere. The chips weren’t bad, and rather naughtily I didn’t touch the salad leaves or the coleslaw.
As for drinks, most were rather expensive. Despite sounding delicious and being incredibly tempting after nearly eight hours of lectures, I didn’t like the thought of having to pay at least, seven Euros for a drink. So I went for a Coca-cola instead, which wasn’t rather cheap itself, as that cost about three-euro fifty cents, though that appears to be the standard price of a soft drink here in France. If you really wanted something ‘cheap’ if you were watching the pennies a little, wine was the cheapest option on the drinks menu. However, I have never really acquired a taste for wine and drinking it often seems like such a chore, which is a bit of shame as I have totally missed out on the whole festival and celebration of the seasonal wine of Beaujolais here in Lyon!
All in all, the entire restaurant wasn’t bad. It was rather quite as it had only just started to serve food in the evening, though there was a rather friendly atmosphere. The food came incredibly quickly which was nice as I was rather hungry after only having eaten half a bar of chocolate during the day. For us a meal cost about fifteen to seventeen Euros, for a main course and a drink, which wasn’t too bad considering the prices of some of the other restaurants we passed.
Would I return? Maybe, but not with haste; perhaps maybe it is a little better when there is live music, though I don’t always find that sort of food particularly appealing, though it was good enough to fill my empty stomach for a good while.
