One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  Not only has he kindly obliged with a list of recommendations and advice (the most important of which is the caution that bouillabaisse, the city’s famous fish stew, generally served in two courses, broth followed by fish, is a ‘folkloric racket’ to be avoided at all costs), but he’s even agreed to have dinner with me. With the ‘various lumps of tired fish’ I’d planned to eat apparently off the menu, Meades recommends I should try a pizza while I’m here: ‘the real vernacular dish of Marseille’, he explains in an email, ‘much better, much lighter than in Naples’.

  My hero’s tentacles stretch far and wide: I quickly find a piece online by his friend, and another of my heroes, chef Rowley Leigh, singing the praises of the ‘rich tomato sauce … thickly laced with anchovies and olives’ at the pizzeria Chez Vincent. Talking to Jonathan later, I discover the place they visited together has actually closed down in the intervening years, but having located somewhere of that name out near the Natural History Museum, I inadvertently find myself lunching in entirely the wrong restaurant,* just off a large traffic junction, next to a grimy-looking bar tabac.

  Ignorant of this fact, however, given the imposter also offers pizza, I order a small, cold beer and study the faded photos of past customers smouldering away above my head. The owner, sometimes tanned and youthful, sometimes the middle-aged man I see behind the bar to my left squinting into a calculator, poses with a fresh-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger and numerous unidentified local celebrities behind tables strewn with faded packets of fags and long-drained bottles of wine. This Monday lunchtime crowd is a rather less glamorous collection of office workers, but Chez Vincent’s pizza makes no concessions to the social niceties of the communal workplace: the smell of raw garlic arrives seconds before it does, making my heart sing after weeks of subtle flavours and restrained seasoning.

  The base, thin but chewy, is, it must be admitted, nothing special, but the anchovies and olives pack a punch and I’m happy as a clam as I trek back down wide, dusty boulevards to the centre, breathing garlic on all and sundry, as I revel in the big city-ness of it all – the Senegalese cafés, the vegan street food, the Breton lobsters for sale in a tank by the tram stop; everywhere something new to look at.

  After ducking back to the hotel for a glass of warm tap water, shops selling cold drinks being as rare in Marseille as everywhere else in France, I take Eddy out to feel the sunshine on his tyres, following the water beside the Vieux Port and along the coast for the thrill of seeing the Mediterranean sparkle in the fitful sun. I pause by an unusually lovely memorial to those killed in North Africa during the Great War, the sea framed in a huge arch known as the Gate to the East, jealously watching the swimmers below and wishing I’d brought my swimming costume along for the ride.

  From there, I take the road up to Notre-Dame de la Garde, the church I spotted from the station this morning. The streets, fringed with palm trees, climb at first gradually and then more steeply, until I’m winding around the rock itself and then have to carry my bike up a set of marble steps to the base of the basilica. It’s very hot indeed by the time I get to the top, the city suffocating under a duvet of cloud, but the view is spectacular – the pink roofs stretching out to the sea on one side, the hills on the other, and the stripy, bullet-scarred Byzantine church behind, crowned with a gold statue of the Madonna and Child, la bonne mère, gazing out at the watery horizon. The basilica’s recapture by North-African units of the French forces in 1944, through a secret passageway from the town below, marked the start of the freeing of Marseille from Nazi control – it seems fitting that, in this most cosmopolitan of French cities, a Catholic basilica was liberated by largely Muslim forces.

  On the way back down, despite such weighty socio-historical musings, it becomes increasingly hard to ignore the smell of burning rubber coming from my front wheel. I stop, worryingly slowly, and take a look: the left brake pad is worn to a sliver at one end. It must have been knocked out of place on Saturday morning’s cattle train, adding an extra frisson of terror to my ride through the noisy rush-hour traffic, though I guess from the age and condition of some of the vehicles that I’m not the only person mechanically winging it in this city.

  There’s no time to do anything about it now, though, because I have a date with Jonathan (and, it must be admitted, his wife Colette) in one of the few Vieux Port restaurants which, according to him, ‘do something approximating to echt [authentic] Provençal cooking’, Chez Madie les Galinettes. As I stroll there, the warm evening light catches the Anish Kapoor-like mirrored canopy on the waterfront, reflecting the tourists and toddlers and dozing tramps beneath. It’s quite lovely, yet I’m also glad to see, for all the glass-bottomed boats and gin palaces nearby, evidence of a working port with piles of nets and old ropes mouldering on the quay opposite the all-you-can-eat Provençal buffet.

  The Meades are already installed at a table overlooking the harbour with a bottle of light red in front of them and prove to be as good company as I could have hoped, and, after a decade in Marseille, thoughtful guides too. Colette tells me the city is such a hodgepodge of cultures that it’s easy to feel at home as a foreigner – not so different, her husband says, somewhat to my surprise, from his beloved Hamburg, or even Liverpool, ‘not in the food, of course, but the people, and their attitude to life’. We discuss the different communities that have settled here – the Armenians, Italians, Vietnamese, North Africans: ‘Because Marseille is fundamentally a load of fishing villages strung together. It’s still a very local place.’ (This, it seems, is one of the reasons that I haven’t been able to find a big central market: everyone goes to the one in their own district.)

  I stare at the menu, waiting for expert guidance, terrified of a misstep on the scale of the bouillabaisse faux-pas. Fish soup, to my relief, passes muster: Meades’s objection to the ‘b’ word is purely conceptual – the claim that the fish that’s brought out as a second course has been cooked in the broth, he says, either means it’s hung around for a bit or they’re lying, though his ire is certainly fanned by the existence of a ‘bouillabaisse charter’, which he describes in an email as basically ‘a price-fixing arrangement among a cabal of restaurants, which are to be avoided’.

  ‘I once said that bouillabaisse was the old Provençal word for “saw you coming”,’ he says now, ‘and it’s been repeated so often that I think some people believe it’s true.’ Chez Madie’s soup gets the thumbs up, however; gently flavoured, with the merest kiss of anise sweetness, it comes with a bowl of saffron-yellow rouille, hot with garlic, a heap of grated cheese and a pile of garlic-rubbed toasts – I think I’ve eaten more garlic today than I have since leaving London. As I’m happily experimenting with different combinations of rouille, bread and cheese, the waiter rushes over in a great flap – ‘You must put them all in together, Madame!’ he scolds. I resent being told how to eat my dinner, but as it’s done out of love for the dish, I meekly agree and then go on as before once he turns back round. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.

  The other starters are wonderfully simple: artichauts à la barigoule – three turned artichoke hearts in a delicate broth – and stewed testicles, as soft as a finely minced meatball, and exponentially more delicious than they sound. After telling me that really offal is the thing to have here, Jonathan demurs when I consider ordering the famous Provençal pieds et paquets (sheep’s feet and knotted tripe) to follow, murmuring that not everyone enjoys it as much as he does. ‘Rowley said it was disgusting,’ confirms Colette helpfully.

  Instead I go for ris de veau, or veal sweetbreads, which turn out to be perfectly inoffensive little things, texturally more like the velveted chicken in a Cantonese restaurant than anything internal, served with two crisp strips of panisse – chickpea fries – which Colette assures me are ever so easy to make.

  Conversation moves on to politics, and inevitably to Brexit, and, possibly in an effort to change the subject, Colette kindly invites me over to lunch the next day – �
��You must see the view from our balcony.’ This prospect, and the fact that the night porter allows me to carry Eddy up the narrow staircase to my room – ‘If you can get it up there, you’re welcome, lady’ – sends me to sleep a very happy woman.

  I’m up with the lark, or perhaps the gull, to catch the fish market in the Vieux Port, in spite of Jonathan’s advice not to bother – he’s right, the spectators outnumber the fish by about two to one, but I do get to look the elusive rascasse, or rockfish, in its spiny little face. ‘C’est la poisson de bouillabaisse, Madame,’ the stallholder confirms helpfully – and the reason why it’s so hard to make an authentic Provençal fish soup away from the Mediterranean. As Anne Willan notes, ‘The southern coast of France is particularly rich in fish soups, partly because they suit the climate, partly because they accommodate bony local fish like “rascasse” (scorpion fish), which defy dissection with a knife and fork.’

  Provençal fish soup

  Though it will never be quite authentic without the bony little fish of the Mediterranean, you can still make an excellent Provençal soup with fish easily available here. If you’re lucky, your fishmonger will be able to put together a fish soup mix for you of small fish and heads – and you will need to go to a fishmonger’s for this unless you want to spend a fortune on whole sea bass and the like at the supermarket, because the bones are vital to give the soup body. I used a red gurnard carcass and flesh, some monkfish, and a hake head the fishmonger happened to have lying around, but whiting, John Dory or whatever they have in, with the exception of very oily fish like salmon, trout, mackerel, herring, etc. should do fine.

  (Note that you can add a lot more oil to the rouille if you’d like to make a larger quantity, but it’s pretty punchy stuff, so you might not need as much as you think.)

  Serves 6

  1 litre fish stock

  ¼ tsp saffron

  2 tbsp olive oil

  2 onions, peeled and finely sliced

  1 bulb of fennel, finely sliced

  3 plump garlic cloves, crushed

  2 thick strips of unwaxed orange peel (organic oranges are unwaxed)

  2 bushy sprigs of parsley, 2 sprigs of thyme, 1 bay leaf

  1 x 400g tin of tomatoes

  2 tbsp tomato purée

  1 large fish head and 1 carcass, or 2 heads or carcasses, depending on what you can get hold of

  About 700g fish, e.g. gunard, monkfish, hake (see above)

  5 tbsp pastis

  For the rouille

  1 fairly mild red chilli

  2–4 garlic cloves

  A pinch of coarse salt

  1 egg yolk

  125ml olive oil (see above)

  To serve

  12 thin slices of baguette

  1 garlic clove

  200g grated Emmenthal

  Bring the stock to a simmer, add the saffron, then turn off the heat and leave to infuse.

  Pour the oil into a large pot, cook the onions and fennel until soft and golden, then stir in the garlic, orange peel and herbs. Fry for a minute, then add the tomatoes and purée.

  Nestle the fish heads and carcasses in the pot, and add the stock and saffron and 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat slightly and simmer for 30 minutes.

  Cut the fish into large chunks and add to the pot. Simmer for 20 minutes more, until falling apart.

  Meanwhile, to make the rouille, deseed and finely chop the chilli and mash to a paste in a pestle and mortar with the garlic and a pinch of coarse salt. Beat in the egg yolk, then transfer to a large bowl and gradually whisk in the oil, a little at a time, until you have a thick mayonnaise. Season to taste.

  Allow the fish broth to cool slightly, then remove as much of the carcasses as you can. Pour the liquid through a sieve into a large bowl, and pick through the solid matter to remove the peel, herbs and any bones you can see.

  Tip the remaining solids back into the liquid and purée until smooth, then pass this through a sieve, pushing vigorously to get as much liquid out as possible; what you’re left with should be very dry, almost fluffy.

  Pour the soup back into the pan. Reheat. Meanwhile, toast the baguette slices and rub with a cut clove of garlic. Add the pastis to the hot soup and season to taste, then serve with the rouille, toasts and grated cheese.

  Back in the Noailles, the traders are still laying out their produce, tubs of olives and bottles of fermented milk, sheep’s feet and sticky pastries – though most of the hot food is not yet ready, I come away with a big bag of blushing apricots and a chewy, almost elastic mhadjeb flatbread filled with oily, slow-cooked tomatoes and onions, which I consume, not without damage to my clothes, outside a little bar: the Marseille equivalent, perhaps, of my customary croissant.

  The mandatory old men propping it up are delighted by my appearance, tomato stains and all, and spend some time dispensing some quite unsolicited advice on the best way to achieve an authentic Marseille tan that will apparently be the envy of all my friends back home. Lots of oil is the secret, they confide. I tell them that this summer I would have gone a better shade of bronze if I’d stayed in Britain, and they all laugh uproariously at this absurd joke. ‘What a sense of humour you Brits have!’ one says, slapping the counter uproariously.

  PAUSE-CAFÉ – Couscous

  Though France invaded Algeria in 1830, and made Tunisia and Morocco ‘French protectorates’ in 1881 and 1912 respectively, food from the Maghreb didn’t really enter the mainstream French diet until post-war labour shortages and Algerian independence brought about significant immigration from North Africa in the 1950s and 60s. By 2005 couscous was ranked fifth in a poll of France’s favourite foods, though, like the British curry, the stuff sold in tins at supermarkets or offered in school canteens often bears only a passing resemblance to the real deal.

  Thankfully, Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian restaurants are easily found across France, and their liberal opening hours and often low prices make them a welcome sight for the hungry traveller in a strange town. As well as fluffy couscous and slow-cooked meat tagines, you’ll find the following on many menus:

  Briq – crisp triangles of deep-fried filo pastry, most commonly stuffed with egg and sometimes tuna, but also found with other fillings.

  B’stilla – round filo pastry pies, often made from sweetly spiced meat like pigeon, but also available as a dessert with a filling of ground almonds and sugar.

  Cornes de gazelle, baklawa and mchawcha – and many other sticky, sugary pastries and cakes, usually containing nuts or semolina, and often spiked with flower waters and saffron. Best enjoyed with fresh mint tea.

  Harira – a rich, spicy lentil or chickpea soup, which may be made with lamb or chicken.

  Harissa – a garlicky, often very fiery, chilli paste from Tunisia.

  Mechouia – tomato and pepper salad, more like a dip in consistency.

  Méchoui – slow-barbecued lamb.

  Merguez – a spicy lamb sausage now ubiquitous at every French barbecue, kebab shop or street market – I’ve even had them on a pizza and in a crêpe. With a generous dollop of fiery harissa and some crunchy pickles, they’re the perfect antidote to yet another gizzard and goat’s cheese salad.

  Zaalouk – a chunky, tomatoey aubergine dip served with flatbreads.

  Pleasant as this all is, I still need to fix my brake problem if I’m going to make it home to impress anyone at all. The first bike shop, a swish place dealing mostly in electric rentals, clearly doesn’t think it worth their while, but directs me to another place round the corner, full of beautiful vintage racers, where they not only swap the block but take five minutes to show me how to adjust and tighten it, ask about my route and generally restore my faith in the universal comradeship of the rouler.

  The day is going so well, in fact, that I’m forced to scupper it with an overly optimistic trip to Le Panier, the ol
dest part of Marseille. I meander around its narrow streets, eavesdropping on the daily life of the quarter, the shouts of schoolchildren (who will today be enjoying, I note from the list posted outside, organic tomato salad with a local olive oil vinaigrette, chicken fillets with chickpeas and a parsley jus, a choice of two cheeses, and a local apple and blackcurrant compôte) and a discussion in the café where I stop for an ice lolly about how hard it is to live here without papers. There’s a lot to be said for travelling on your own, I think; you see more.

  Unfortunately, that doesn’t always include street signs – and it takes me 20 minutes of increasingly bitter wandering around decreasingly charming alleyways to locate poor old Eddy, abandoned in what I now see is a maze. I’m forced to scupper my plan to pick up Tunisian pastries in the Noailles for my hosts in favour of hotfooting it straight to Jonathan and Colette’s apartment in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse, a ‘vertical garden city’ considered by many to be the pioneering modernist’s great masterpiece.

  Running so very late, I have no time to goggle at the architectural marvels of the exterior – though I do appreciate the great man’s thoughtfulness in installing so many bike racks. Unfortunately, it takes me another 10 minutes, once inside, to find the Meades’s front door: the hallways are deliberately cool and dark, and none of the illuminated red doors bear anything related to the number I’ve been given.

  Eventually, almost gibbering with the shame of my tardiness (and this from a person who considers anything up to 15 minutes late basically on time), I practically fall into their apartment, a lovely double-height space full of light and art. The view is indeed glorious, especially from the roof terrace, where Colette takes me after a lunch of well-dressed salad, saucisson, pecorino, bread and truly excellent strawberries: small and sharply perfumed, a promise of good things to come. ‘It’s the produce here that’s so good,’ Jonathan says as we eat. ‘Perhaps there’s better, cleverer restaurant cooking going on in London, but these ingredients, French ingredients …’ – he gestures at the fruit – ‘they’re just in a different league.’ That’s why, we agree, people still go into such rhapsodies over French restaurants: they have a head start.