29 rue de Belfort, Lyon (00 33 4 78 29 17 23). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £75

Come May, when Eurostar starts its direct service to Lyon (and southern points beyond), trains will depart London’s St Pancras full of people who have missed breakfast. Anybody who has built a trip around eating opportunities will recognise the strategy: the way appetite needs to be protected, like a sprinter’s calf muscles before the race; the intense planning of the light lunch to enable the ludicrous dinner; the fantasising over a local dish prepared to its very best advantage in a manner that makes your palms sweaty with anticipation.

But for too many people, something else will come with it: The Fear, the gut-churning terror that despite all the planning, guide scrutinising and needy Twitter interrogating, you will still somehow manage not to get to the heart of the city’s food. You will forever worry that somewhere, over the brow of the hill, someone else is eating the real thing with a big, smug fat-smeared grin on their face while you’re making do with a thin approximation.

Many less belly-obsessed observers will argue that such people should get out less. But as I know The Fear very well, I can only sympathise. Hence I offer this week’s restaurant as a gift. It’s that place in Lyon you were looking for – the one known by some but not all of the locals; the one in the unfashionable part of town; the one that cleaves to the local traditions without being hidebound by them. For this I have to thank my Guardian colleague Marina O’Loughlin, who sent me there. She knows a thing or two, does Marina.

The fact is that it can be a slightly tricky city. The cult around chef Paul Bocuse, who has held three Michelin stars for Lyon for more than 40 years (to the point where some wonder whether Michelin would ever dare take them away, whatever the quality of the food) has resulted in a certain marketing gloss to its restaurants. Even the great Les Halles de Lyon, the covered fancy food market, now has Bocuse’s name attached to the title as an honorarium. Inside, all is butchers’ counters and charcutiers and patisseries selling saucisson and andouillette, foie gras and truffles, oysters and scallops and brioche and macarons in Disney shades. It is glorious and head-spinning, and just a little bit Vegas.

Le Canut et les Gones – the name references the slang for the silk workers of Lyon – is not at all Vegas. Tucked away up the hill in the quiet Croix-Rousse district, once a focus for silk-making, it plays on the ideas of the city’s bouchons. These are the much-loved and now certificated working-class eateries which serve sturdy dishes, many of them from the cheaper, wobbly cuts that the wealthy would discard. The decor is tired 70s chic, like it was decorated 45 years ago by your late grandma, who then lost the will to decorate ever again. There is terrifying orange patterned wallpaper, a floor of pure Linoleum and hardwood chairs built for utility.

As self-taught chef Frank Blanc opened this restaurant in the 90s that’s all clearly a put-on job, but it’s lovingly done. Old clocks fill every square foot of wall space – only the one over the bar tells the correct time – along with retro tabac signs jutting out above the diners’ heads.

There is a fixed-price menu for a reasonable €28.80, with a few specials at a supplement. From the fixed price I manage to bend the knee at some of the great Lyonnaise culinary stations of the cross. In a classic bouchon, the dish of tête de veau, the long-simmered then pressed calf’s head, would be served as a thick slab, straight through the bonce, so you could practically identify the key muscles. Here, it is sliced exceptionally thinly then layered on to a hot plate so the rich, sticky, glutinous bits – the really good bits – just begin to melt. It is served with a few turned Ratte potatoes and dressed with a classic mustardy sauce ravigote bursting with fresh tarragon.

For my main course it is andouillette gratin, the porkiest (and stinkiest) of chitterling sausages, with the thrilling back note of gut, slow-cooked with cream and grain mustard unto an unctuous mess and then grilled under breadcrumbs to crisp. It is powerful and serious and also sticky: the kind of cookery that emerges out of an imperative not to waste anything. Hence it delivers everything. This is a dish designed to get you through a winter of unaffordable gas bills. If it’s not for you, neither is Lyon. Go somewhere else.

On the other side of the table were the specials: a starter of finely picked white crabmeat bound with mayonnaise on discs of beetroot and Jerusalem artichoke, topped by a little dollop of caviar which managed to bring a distinct earthiness to the seashore. That was followed by a fine roasted loin of Iberican pork with roasted salsify and carrots and a veal jus punched up with balsamic vinegar. We drank a white Beaujolais in eminently covetable thick-bottomed pots, the 46cl bottles of Lyon that make it very easy to keep on drinking.

Next, the obligatory cheese course. All right, it’s not obligatory, but it’s cheese, which Lyon does with uncommon commitment, so how could we not? There’s a whole round of shouty St Marcellin and a dish of cervelle de canut – literally silk worker’s brains. It’s a finely whipped fromage blanc with fresh herbs, olive oil, vinegar and chopped raw shallots, with a kick on it like a Boursin that has worked out what it wants to be when it grows up. We spooned it away on to French bread and paid no heed to how we would smell in the morning.

Dessert brought the only misstep: a relentless éclair, made with a thick pastry with a texture that was less choux than compressed croissant, filled with an equally heavy caramel cream. Happily there was also a toothsome play on the vivid pink praline tart of Lyon. To the uninitiated, they look like they should taste of raspberries rather than just crushed sugared almonds. So this one does – a huge hit of fruitiness and sweet and crisp pastry.

We rested our elbows on the tables and cleaned the plates, and at the end paid a bill which would make those used to excruciating London prices sigh and shake their heads. And with a sense that in one meal we had done a certain part of Lyon’s traditions justice, we staggered down off the hill.

Jay’s news bites

• Terroirs, in London WC2, doesn’t specifically advertise itself as a Lyonnaise bistro, but it does have more than a slight accent: there are the nibbles of duck scratchings, and the pork and pistachio terrines, as well as enough stinky cheese to keep a dairy in business. They even serve cervelle de canut. All that and an intriguing wine list (terroirswinebar.com).
  
• Dan Doherty, executive chef of Duck and Waffle, has launched an initiative offering rising stars the chance to cook for the public. Once a month four young chefs will cook a course each at a special dinner. The first – with chefs from Quay in Sydney, Petersham Nurseries, Duck and Waffle and Pizarro – will be at Pizarro, in Bermondsey, London SE1, on 16 February. Others follow at Petersham Nurseries and Sam’s of Brighton (chefsoftomorrow.co.uk).
  
• Who says Britain isn’t a world gastronomic leader? The first non-American to head up McDonald’s worldwide is an Englishman. Congrats to Steve Easterbrook. We wish him well, not least because sales dropped by 4.1% in the US last year.
  

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter@jayrayner1