KEY POINTS:
Famed food critic Maurice Curnonsky wrote that gourmet cooking in Lyon had reached the pinnacle of its art because of its simplicity.
The third-largest city in France still carries that supreme culinary reputation and the All Blacks will want to match that with a minimalist sporting mantra in
the same city tonight.
The All Blacks raced out of the blocks against Italy to set high standards for the second-stringers to emulate against Portugal.
Several seasoned sides have failed to kill off inferior rivals in this tournament because they have not had the right intensive attitude or have over-complicated their game plans.
The All Black strategy must be all about the sporting KISS theory which has been a proven rugby method - keep it simple, stupid.
They must attack the Portuguese strength up front before spreading possession, they must drag the defences to the middle of the Stade de Gerland before sending the ball to their venomous threequarters.
Italy had a powerful pack who made the mistake of sliding off their primary tasks to help defend out wide and the All Black pack split them through the centre. As they continued to do that, the Italians did not know where to send their defenders.
The ground tonight will be full, with locals looking to enthuse about a Michelin star performance from the tournament-favourite All Blacks.
Four players, Mils Muliaina, Ali Williams, Chris Jack and captain Jerry Collins, return from the first match and will be charged with laying down the standards expected of those in the rest of the squad.
Some have an outside chance of cracking the best XV for the opening quarter-final in Cardiff.
Midfielders Conrad Smith and Aaron Mauger head that list with Joe Rokocoko in the backs while for others, like the returning Greg Somerville, and the underdone Sione Lauaki, this is the opportunity to press for a place in the best 22.
This will be Smith's watershed moment on tour. Any unfortunate recurrence of his hamstring troubles or an untidy impact after such a lengthy layoff will provoke selection ideas about alternate centres for the playoffs.
He was a frustrated man when he was a late scratching from the test against Italy and it would be natural for him to fret tonight about making a strong impression.
Mauger, too, is perhaps a shade behind Luke McAlister in a preferred top XV but a calculated, clinical, unhurried return from Mauger in tandem with Smith is just the response to send the All Black selectors into extended team debates.
Inevitably, the match will loosen up if the All Blacks produce the sustained speed, power and purpose they showed last week.
At that stage, Collins and his henchmen must demand more accurate rugby.
The temptation for such a bunch of skilled athletes will be to chuck the ball around with the sort of deceptive sevens skills most of them possess.
That will bewilder their opponents who have made the World Cup for the first time in their history.
Any sort of frothy Globetrotter antics will entertain the crowd but it will not amuse the coaches if it becomes ingrained too deeply tomorrow in the team structure.
Approaching a test when you are expected to destroy the opposition is all about going back to the basics. Those messages will have been as strong this week from Graham Henry as they were before the start of the campaign in Marseille.
His instructions may have been even more hardline, that no matter the score or the shape of the game, he does not want the All Blacks to deviate from eight basic plays.
Sporting simplicity, as in cooking, often produces high quality results.
