Somewhere along the way of my haphazard, improvisational French culinary education I got interested in olive oil—the diversity of olive oils—the different levels of greenness and maturity, olive varietals, oils produced after slight, controlled fermentation of the olives, and aromatic olive oils. It’s done wonders for my cooking; with few ingredients, I can enhance a salad, vegetable dish, fish or beef with a drizzle of this or a sprinkling of that.

I’m still an olive oil amateur, mind you, but I did get invited onto the jury of an international olive oil competition earlier this year. There were several juries, including a jury of olive oil professionals and juries of individuals experienced in tasting things. Mine was one of the latter. The challenge of being a juror isn’t to say I like this one or that one (anyone can do that) but to articulate your impression of each one, to compare judiciously and to defend your position, if necessary. I don’t know if I was up to the task, but I was certainly into the challenge. Here’s a picture of other members of the jury wondering what I’m doing there.

What was I doing there? I was using and improving my education in olive oil.

That was in Paris, but of course the most interesting way to educate one’s palate, improve one’s ability to articulate, and to meet producers and have fun along the way, is through travel, which for me means leaving Paris. Hitting the road and meeting people who know how to talk about what they produce or create—that’s the way I enjoy educating myself, and I take great pleasure in introducing travelers to those producers and creators.

Bastide du Laval in Cadenet (Luberon)

It was while biking in the Luberon area of Provence—lots of olive orchards in Provence—that I first stopped at Bastide du Laval. You don’t even have to be interested in olive oil to enjoy a walk among the orchards there with a beautiful view out to the Luberon hillscape.

In 1998, Roland and Carine Coupat, after living in the United States for a dozen years working in the tourist and travel industry, decided to return to France, and the following year they bought a wine estate in Cadenet in the Luberon area. While continuing to work in the travel business in France, they planted thousands of olive trees on the property. The trees grew and so did their son Léo. Léo now runs the place, which has about 4000 olive trees spread over 37 acres. Olive oil is the main product but there’s also still vineyard on the estate that produces some easy-drinking wine. Meet Léo.

Like most producers, Léo Coupat makes a wide range of olive oils. As I say, there’s a question of greenness, maturity, varietals, etc. Some of them are more to my taste than others—rather, some I would know how to use more than others. Visitors can have a free tasting of them all and also learn how olive oil is made. Any olive oil education should avoid the study of aromatics for the first semester, but here, on a second visit and with a little experience on my palate, I bought a bottle of Bastide du Laval olive oil with natural truffle aroma. I wanted to figure out how to use it without overpowering a dish. You know truffles, right?, truffe in French, those pungent tumor-shaped mushrooms that are dug up in, among other places, Provence. Call it truffle oil if you like, though that makes it sound as though the oil is from truffles whereas it’s produced by mixing truffle aroma in with the olive oil.

So what to do with this truffle oil? Léo advised me to start by drizzling a little on pasta to get a feel for how to use it. Start with some neutral extra virgin olive oil, he said, so that the fresh pasta won’t stick, then add just a bit of truffle oil, taste, then add more until you’ve found what you consider to be the appropriate dose. So that’s what I did, with a little salt and pepper, and topping my dish with parmigiano reggiano. Quite simple and quite good, I must say. My truffle oil education is now off and running.

So what do I try next? I’m thinking a slight drizzle on roasted or mashed potatoes, maybe grate some cheese on that. I’ll have to think about what cheese to use. If I were a French truffle hunter (or an expensive restaurant during truffle season), I’d add some bits of truffle in scrambled eggs for lunch or dinner, so I suppose that a nip of truffle oil instead of the actual truffles could work. Worth a try. But keep is simple, let the truffle oil do the work. You don’t need a dozen ingredients to make a pleasing meal. A sprinkling on grilled meat? Absolutely, with some herbs on top—herbes de Provence, of course. And pizza, I’ll definitely try it on pizza. How about on fish? Salmon? Maybe. Monkfish. Why not? But you’ve got to be delicate with aromatic olive oil, because as a wise man once wrote: “Just a little, not a lot, or something may happen, you never know…”

Bastide du Laval, 199 Chemin de la Royère, 84160 Cadenet. Tel.: +33 (0)4 90 08 95 80.

CastelaS in Les Baux de Provence

On another trip, driving this time—Saint Rémy, Les Baux, Arles—I had an enjoyable and instructive encounter with Catherine and Jean-Benoît Hugues, producers of CastelaS olive oil, at their mill, tasting room and boutique two miles east of the tourist village of Les Baux de Provence. Coincidentally, for I wasn’t actually looking for an American connection, they, too, had lived in the United States, 15 years in Arizona, before rerooting themselves in Provence in 1997.

Theirs is a tremendous estate, with 110 acres within the olive oil appellation (AOP or Protected Designation of Origin) Vallée des Baux de Provence and another 160 acres outside of the appellation zone. In the photo above, you can see the village of Les Baux in the background. From another angle, one would see the Alpilles in the distance. As at Bastide du Laval, you can enjoy a tasting of their wide range and also visit their installation to see how olive oil is made.

Returning recently, I bought a bottle of Noir d’Olive (Olive Black) oil, which has a deep, rich, slightly peppery, slightly fermented taste. “Perfect for salads, fish, mushrooms, mashed potatoes” reads the bottle, all of which sounds appropriate to me. I started with salad since it’s nearly a dressing in its own right. Next up, fish and mashed potatoes. The CastelaS website provides recipes for use of their olive oils.

Moulin CastelaS, Mas de l’Olivier, 13520 Les Baux de Provence. Tel. +33 (0)4 90 54 50 86. Taking D27 east of the village, you’ll see CastelaS on the left shortly before reaching D5.

Other Provence Olive Oils

Those are but two of the many olive oil producers in Provence. I discovered many other quality producers when the labels were revealed after my participation on the jury of the AVPA olive oil contest. AVPA stands for Agence pour la Valorisation des Produits Agricoles, meaning Agency for the Appreciation of Agricultural Products. Jean-Emmanuel Jourde, AVPA president, and Philippe Juglar, AVPA secretary, have created a judging system to award different types of edible oils (of which I was on one of the olive oil juries), coffees roasted at place of origin, teas of the world, and chocolates processed at place of origin.

(Several months after participating on the olive oil jury, I accepted an invitation to join on the jury for “fantasy” chocolates, which I found much more difficult as far as my own abilities to analyze, describe and rate. Along with notes of citrus, basil, cherry or whatever, I kept finding that the earthy dark chocolates tasted like delicious mud and had trouble finding other words for it without prompting.)

The olive oil competition was international, with most entrants naturally coming from Mediterranean countries, which produces the vast majority of the world’s olive oil. Spanish and Italian olive oils dominated among the winners. Lots of uninspiring industrial olive oils come from those world leaders in production, but we tasted some exceptional artisanal oils from there. French production, by comparison with other countries along the Mediterranean basin, is relatively confidential. Nevertheless, there were some Provençale stand-outs among the awardees,  such Domaine Salvator (Cuvée Paradis), Huile H de Leos (Selection H de Leos Fruite Mur), Moulin à huile de Partegal (Cuve Magali), Moulin Cornille (Cuve 63), which can also be visited also near Les Baux de Provence, and “Lol’ive” Domaine Leydier (Noir cuve 9,2).

Balsamic Vinegar from Bals’Art in Roussillon

“French dressing” as known in the U.S. has little relation to the homemade dressing put on salad in French homes, which is typically a vinaigrette of olive oil, (wine) vinegar, (Dijon) mustard and seasoning. So after getting to know the olive oils of Bastide du Laval and Moulin CastelaS, I jumped on the occasion to get to know the balsamic vinegars of Jean-Michel Martias’s Bals’Art when I chanced upon his shop while visiting the pretty ochre-cliff village of Roussillon during a recent driving tour of the Luberon.

Jean-Michel Martias, who is originally from Marseille and has been producing vinegar since 2017, may have advisors and assistants, but to hear him speak about his balsamic vinegars is to hear the passion of a one-man band explaining how he arranges and plays his instruments. From my point of view as a vinegar novice, though a bit less so after visiting the shop, he presents a superb range of about two dozen vinegars. He also does perpetual research for future products. Most sales are from his shop in Roussillon, where visitors can have an extensive tasting, and online.

Jean-Michel currently produces his vinegars from the musts of organic syrah and granache grapes from Provence and Lambrusco (red) and trebbiana (white) from Italy. He uses low-temperature reduction over 10 to 40 hours, so while his balsamic vinegars don’t follow the process (and pricing) of 12+ years of wooden-barrel ageing that goes into Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, they are also a far cry from the watered down industrial balsamic vinegars that are typically found in supermarkets. For his flavored vinegars, the flavor comes through maceration of, for example, basil, pepper, lemon or lavender honey.

I purchased a bottle of his Velours Noir (Black Velvet), a dense, syrupy vinegar tasting of ripe cherry and raspberry. Too rich and intense for a vinaigrette, I think. When I called Jean-Michel later from home to ask how else he recommended that I use it, he suggested dribbling it on a tomato or sprinkling it on vanilla ice cream or drizzling some on duck magret. For now, I’ve only enjoyed a few drops on a teaspoon, then a few more drops, and I had to stop myself before consuming the entire bottle as though it were an after-dinner liqueur.

I also bought a balsamic vinegar block, a product that Jean-Michel makes by adding to his vinegar the gelling agent agar-agar, an extract from red seaweed from along France’s Atlantic coast. Using a fine grater, I grated a few bits on an endive salad on which I’d simply poured some of the CastelaS Noir d’Olive mentioned earlier. It tasted as I would have imagined: vinegar strips in an olive-rich salad. Interesting, I’d say for now. Again, I asked Jean-Michel how best to approach the block. Use it wherever you might otherwise add a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, he told me. In other words, it’s something to play with during recess while pursuing my Provence olive oil education.

Bals’Art, 15 rue du Castrum, 84220 Roussillon. Tel.: +33(0)4 32 52 16 40.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

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Imagine visiting Boston in the 1980s and looking for the bar from Cheers, or New York City in the 1990s in search of the Seinfeld diner, or again in 2001 for the coffee shop in Friends. Do that and you can well imagine the excitement that fans of France’s longest-running TV series, Plus belle la vie (Life’s so sweet), feel when they come to Marseille in search of the Mistral Bar in the Mistral district.

They won’t find the Mistral, of course, since it’s a fictional bar in a fictional neighborhood, but the Mistral district was largely inspired by the Panier, which is a very real and stroll-worthy district just a ten-minute walk from the Old Port.

Created in 2004 and still going strong, Plus belle la vie is an easy-going prime-time urban soap opera with myriad characters. It’s a glossy, brightly colored soap, not quite comedy, not quite drama, far from “true” but with frequent nods to issues of the day. Extracts from the series can be seen on its official website.

Since the show is shot then shown with little delay its writers are able to incorporate current events into the storyline. This allows characters to discuss the issues of the day while living out their fictional lives, loves, friendships and melodramas. Demonstrations held during parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage, the aftershock of the terrorist attack against the weekly Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, and the French moratorium on the exploitation of shale gas have all been discussed by characters while the subjects were still headlining the news. Questions of racism, homosexuality, violence, rape, and drug and alcohol addictions all find a place in the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously soap-opera-style intrigue. The show is broadcast at 8:25pm, overlapping with the prime evening network news hour.

Most of the scenes of Plus belle la vie are shot behind the closed doors of the La Belle de Mai studios, in the 3rd district of Marseille, rather than in the Panier. Nevertheless, fans visiting Marseille and looking for the Mistral Bar, one of the central settings in the series, will often end up reveling in a drink at the Bar des 13 Coins, 45 rue Sainte-Françoise on the Panier’s Place des Treize Cantons, which the show’s production designer says inspired the fictional Mistral Bar in the TV series. The Bar des 13 Coins is a small family café-restaurant with outdoor tables on a shady terrace with three big trees and colorful artwork on the facade. Like a café-bar on a village square in Provence, this is the venue to meet friends to share the trials and joys of everyday life in the sunny side of France.

In a sense, Plus belle la vie could take place anywhere in France, except for the occasional view of the Mediterranean or of Notre Dame de la Garde Church or talk about the OM, Marseille’s soccer team. Furthermore, the actors don’t even speak in the colorful singing accent of southern France, let alone with the slang of Marseille. Some say that if the real local accent were spoken it would be necessary to have subtitles in French. But even removed from local reality “Plus belle la vie” has been a hit in Marseille as well as throughout France.

Viewers have love-hate relationships with the assortment of characters, while the central character remains the neighborhood itself. Which brings us to the real Panier, a district of narrow, sloping streets, colorful facades and shutters, laundry hanging out the window, and a history of written history dating back to the ancient Greeks.

From ancient Greeks to poor immigrants to cut-throat films to gentrification

Settled in 630 BC by the ancient Greeks, the Panier (long before it took on its current name) was the area first settled in Marseille. More recently, due to its location near the seaport, the Panier has continued to welcome successive waves of immigration: Neapolitans, Corsicans, South Americans, North Africans, Vietnamese and Comorians from the islands near Madagascar.

This neighborhood draws its name from the Logis du Panier, an inn that existed in the area in the 17th century and probably had a basket (panier) suspended outside. The Panier became a poor, working class neighborhood, what the French call a quartier populaire, when in the 17th century, wealthy merchants left it to settle in the new neighborhoods in the east which were created under the impetus of Colbert during the reign of Louis XIV. By the mid-19th century the Panier had acquired its reputation as a rough, dangerous, crime-ridden area, a reputation that it held onto until several decades ago.

The “Mediterranean noir” writer, Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000), who grew up in the Panier, paints an old Bronx-like picture of the area in “Total Chaos” or “Total Kéhops” in French. Izzo’s crime fiction follows the protagonist Fabio Montale, a disillusioned local cop making his rounds on the hard, seedy  streets of this neighborhood, a den for gangs and drug dealers, full of sailors, prostitutes and whorehouses.

Izzo also vividly describes the demolition by the German occupying force of a section of the Panier in 1943, as they considered its maze of narrow streets to be a haven for resistant fighters, refugees, criminals, prostitutes, Jews and Communists. On January 24, 1943, some 30,000 inhabitants from the neighborhood were evacuated, with about 2,000 sent to concentration camps. Then 1,500 houses in the lower section of the Old Town were dynamited.

Through the eyes of Montale, readers witness the humiliation of Fabio’s father, a docker at the port, and his mother, who toiled away 14 hours a day, packing dates. They were rounded up in the middle of the night on January 24, 1943 because of an expulsion order. Fabio reflects back about that day and the Nazis’ dream of destroying part of this neighborhood as it was considered to be a den of degenerate behavior.

A mini-series based on Izzo’s books, with Alain Delon starring as Fabio Montale, was shown on French TV in 2002.

Even just 20 years ago the Panier was known as a cut-throat area and was largely avoided by those living outside the neighborhood. Its cinematic reputation didn’t help. Borsalino (1970), directed by Jacques Deray and starring Alain Delon and John-Paul Belmondo, is a famous French gangster movie taking place in 1930. La French (in English, The Connection) (2014), directed by Cédric Jimenez and starring Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche, is an action film about a drug gang in the 1970s.

The City of Marseille began renovating the Panier in 1983, and little by little the neighborhood has changed. Increasingly gentrified while retaining some funk and grit, the Panier is now viewed as far safer than decades ago. It has been called Marseille’s Montmartre. Artist studios, craft shops and trendy cafes and bars have replaced brothels of the past.

Several years ago a local association and a local theater teamed up to produce as a community project a counter-version of Plus belle la vie called C’est pas joli, joli (It’s not a pretty picture). Residents of the Panier got their hand at acting, guided by professionals but bringing to the screenplay their own interpretation. Here are the first and second episodes.

Visiting the Panier

Large portions of the Panier are closed to car traffic from late morning onwards, giving the neighborhood a distinctive atmosphere of a village in Provence, in particular around the Bar des 13 Coins.

Bocce ball, which the French call boules, with pétanque being its Provencal version, is right at home here… at the Musée de la Boule, a fun mix of shop, museum and a pétanque court. And where there is pétanque in Provence there’s sure to be pastis, the anise-flavored spirit and cocktail associated with summer days in the South of France. So it’s no surprise to find the Janot Pastis Boutique next to the Boule Museum. Also nearby is Le Clan des Cigales, a restaurant serving Mediterranean cuisine based on French products. A boutique across the street sells santons, small figurines placed in traditional Provence Nativity-village scenes. From there you need only follow your nose to find nearby another product associated with this city: Marseille soap, made with vegetable oils.

The Panier is very hilly, so for less walking the district can be visited by taking the little tourist “train,” which can be gotten at the Quai du Port across from City Hall (Hôtel de Ville). The main sights will be pointed out with recorded commentary in French, English and Italian. Riders can hop off to visit La Vieille Charité, formerly a home for the poor and wayward built between 1671 and 1749, which is one of the city’s most important historical monuments. La Vieille Charité now houses museums with a permanent collection of archeology from around the world, galleries, a cultural center, a café and a small cinema. A temporary exhibit examining the travels of the American writer Jack London in the South Seas is being shown here from Sept. 8, 2017 to Jan. 7, 2018.

A bilingual (English/French) walking tour of Le Panier is available through the tourist office on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It sets out from the Tourist Office located at 11 La Canebière and enters the heart of the Panier district via the Port area, just as the ancient Greeks did. The tour ends at the Place de Lenche, site of the Greek agora and the Roman forum. The area, busy with cafés and restaurants, offers a spectacular view of the old Port and the Notre Dame de la Garde Church.

The tour provides the keys to understanding the development of Marseille through the centuries, including the separation between the wealthier coastal zone to the south and the poorer neighborhoods to the north, and reconstruction work that was necessary following demolition by the German occupying force in 1943.

Near the Panier: The Cathedral and the MuCEM

Just as one doesn’t go to Paris to only visit Montmartre, one doesn’t come to Marseille simply to visit the Panier, hardcore Plus belle la vie fans aside.

Nearby, down by the marine terminal, is the enormous Sainte Marie Majeure Cathedral, often referred to as La Major. Marseille’s recent architectural claims to fame are three stunning museum buildings: the Villa Méditerranée cultural and conference center, the Regards de Provence Museum, and the MuCEM. They were all inaugurated in 2013, the city’s year as the European Capital of Culture. (Marseille has been named European Capital of Sport for 2017, but that’s another story.)

The most popular and renowned of the three is the MuCEM, the Museum of Mediterranean Civilization and Culture. More than a museum, actually, the MuCEM is a multidisciplinary cultural institution housing the Mediterranean Gallery, major temporary exhibitions, and much more.

A panoramic view can be had from the rooftop terrace eating and drinking area, which includes four spaces—café, snack, casual, chic—collectively called Le Môle Passédat. Reservations are recommended for the most polished of these, La Table. The eateries are overseen by Gérard Passédat, chef of the 3-star Michelin restaurant Le Petit Nice located in the Marseille’s 7th arrondissement.

Meanwhile, the port remains the city’s long-time home to bouillabaisse, the centerpiece of Marseille’s sea-inspired cuisine.

Other opportunities for fine dining, shopping and artist exhibitions can be found in the beautifully renovated Docks Village, which opened in 2015, or the Terrasses du Port. These renovations and constructions were part of the ambitious Marseille-Euroméditerranée project, which was initiated in 1995 to renovate a nearly 1200-acre zone in the heart of the city, between the commercial harbor, the Old Port and the TGV station. Involving a 7-billion euro investment, it was at the time the largest urban renewal project in southern Europe.

Crime and Safety in Marseille

Marseille is often compared to my own hometown of Chicago in terms of crime and safety. Drug- and weapons-related gang and organized crime violence are not uncommon in certain quarters. As in Chicago, in Marseille I would avoid certain areas, especially at night. That goes for much of the 3rd arrondissement, one of the poorest neighborhoods in France. The centrally located St. Charles train station may have been beautifully modernized but I would not loiter around the station area. Neither would I walk around La Canebière at night. Keeping an eye on one’s luggage, not placing a purse on the ground by one’s chair in a restaurant, and not flaunting expensive-looking costume jewelry, let along the real thing, are common sense tips that don’t solely apply to Marseille but are worth keeping in mind with respect to this city.

But don’t let those warnings keep you away from discovering France’s second largest city and most multicultural port city, particularly the portions described in this article. For my recent visit, I booked accommodations in the Panier itself and walked around the neighborhood alone at night. I felt safe on the Waterfront with the MuCEM and other new museums, at the port. There’s a police station, the Commissariat de l’Evéché, a stone’s throw from the Major Cathedral at the entrance of the Panier.

(c) 2017

Wendy Dubreuil is a conference interpreter with a passion for French TV shows and films and challenging social issues.

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An up-and-coming hotel group decides to make a move on a historic rural inn, expand the building, triple its number of rooms, install a spa and add a conference center. With a project like this, there’s a lot that can go amiss on the aesthetic side, but the Marseille-based Maranatha Group has pulled it off with panache.

The 4-star Moulin de Vernègues, whose foundations date to the 13th century, packs a whole Dan Brown mini-series into its stone walls. The Knights Templars slept here (a yet-undiscovered underground tunnel presumably leads to their fortress) and they may well have buried a secret treasure somewhere beneath the paving stones. PG-rated Good King René patronized the dining hall, but the family kept things kinky by marrying into the Marquis de Sade dynasty. Chartreuse monks brewed mysterious potions on the premises in the 17th century. Post-revolution, the building operated as a postal relay.

While the redecoration of the old house (which includes a private chapel) was not entirely finished when we visited in May, we liked everything we saw. The 13th-century fireplace and elaborately-painted ceiling beams mesh well with contemporary furniture in Provençal shades of almond, poppy, lilac and ochre.

The 34 rooms in this section of the hotel blend historically austere lines with fancy bathrooms and cable TV.

What’s more surprising is how well the modern extensions work. Architect Olivier Sabran has linked the old and new buildings with covered bridges and artfully harmonized the new construction materials with the old stonework. The spa (sauna, hammam, Jacuzzi plus massages and Occitan facial treatments) has been nestled into the former stables.

Those covered bridges add a labyrinth factor to navigating the hotel.  It’s easy to get lost betwixt the bedroom and the bar even before you have a drink. But if you do want a drink with dinner, the wine-list ranges from delightful Côteaux d’Aix en Provence from the Château de Calaron, 29€, to 1986 Cheval Blanc, 875€. The morning after, breakfast is large and lavish–don’t miss the house-made jams.

There’s more to Vernègues than tanning at the pool and hot-stone massages at the spa. Most visitors work off the calories at the adjoining Golf de Pont-Royal. (You can see the second hole from the dining room.) It’s a technical course designed by Seve Ballesteros. Bring your camera for the par 4 seventh hole, a dogleg with a spectacular view of the Alpilles and Lubéron hills.

A drawback for all this rural charm is that it’s about a 45-minute drive to Avignon, Arles or Aix-en-Provence, but that could also be seen as an advantage since it places visitors more or less equidistant from each of these towns as well as just 25 minutes from Cavaillon, home to a succulent melon.

Le Moulin de Vernègues, Route Domaine et Golf de Pont Royal, RN7, 13370 Mallemort, Bouches-du-Rhone. Tel. 04 90 59 12 00. Summer rates run 183-390€, slightly lower in other seasons plus other off-season packages.

© 2013, Corinne LaBalme

Corinne LaBalme, a Paris-based writer, journalist and editor, is currently developing a series of lifestyle documentaries for Muses Productions.

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