mâchon

The mâchon (from mâcher, or ‘chew’) is by a long stretch the most serious breakfast in France. Served in the bouchons, Lyon’s traditional purveyors of local comfort food, a mâchon features offal in all its glory: sausages, tête de veau, pâtés, tablier de sapeur, grattons, and cervelle de canut.

A mâchon properly starts with a Communard (a Kir made of Beaujolais and crème de cassis), followed by serious quantities of Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône or Coteaux du Lyonnais, served in a pot lyonnais—thick bottomed bottles that hold 46 cl (0.9-pint). Lyon’s silkworkers, the canuts, were actually entitled to 50 cl of wine per day, but the bosses decided to exploit them just a bit more...a litre of wine could fill two pots—and the boss’s glass.