Call it a combination of luck and due diligence then, and as a result we hit it right at Sénanque Abbey, we hit it right on the plateau surrounding Sault, we hit it right at various points in between, and from time to time we were wowed by bright, eye-catching sunflower fields.

Stunning views of purple-blue fields of lavender in bloom are far from the only pleasure of Provence, but such images have become so engrained in the traveler’s imagination of the perfect Provence vacation that the most common question I get from those planning to visit the region is “When is the lavender in bloom?”

When is lavender in bloom, and where?

Broadly speaking, Provence’s “blue gold” blooms from early June to mid-August, even beyond, though the edges of that 10-week window can be iffy. So let’s say mid-June to late-July to be sure.

That doesn’t mean you’ll find flowering fields everywhere during that period. Lavender—both “true” lavender and the hybrid lavandin—blooms at different times, in different locations, at different altitudes. It stays in color for a month or more before being harvested, again at different times, locations, altitudes. So don’t come expecting to find all of the fields in full color throughout the summer.

Lavender fields typically begin to flower east of the Rhone River around the second week in June in the lower altitudes in the department of Drôme (particularly in its southern portion known as Drôme Provençale) and in the northern portion of the department of Vaucluse, as well as in Vaucluse’s southern portion in and around the Luberon (e.g. Gordes, Sénanque).

One morning last year, on a 7th of June, while biking along the northern side of the Luberon, after passing several brown-grey fields, I sensed a haze of the palest of purples hanging like fog over long rows of planted mounds—or it was a mirage?

Depending on the type of plant, the weather and the altitude, the flowering begins a week or two or three later on the slopes and especially plateaus further from the Rhone River in Drome, Vaucluse (e.g. Sault) and Alpes du Haute Provence (e.g. Valensole), as well as in bordering departments.

While harvesting of the lower fields may begin as early as July 1, harvesting at the higher altitudes won’t be underway until the second half of the month, possibly not until the end of July or even well into August.

If your sense of the geography of the above-mentioned areas is unclear, see this map of approximate blooming and harvest periods.

Within the periods indicated on that map, those lovely lavender fields won’t be everywhere. You may have to go looking for them. But don’t make a detour to distant fields without first asking someone in the know, such as at a local tourist office. Otherwise, you may arrive only to find long mounds of dirt, as though the fields were a graveyard for the sandworms from Dune. Imagine how disheartening it can be to arrive at a field of dreams only to be told, “Oh, you should have been here yesterday, before the harvest. It was beautiful.”

Travelers needing a lavender fix while visiting the Riviera from mid-July into August may try venturing up to the fields north of Grasse.

Several years ago, on a 6th of August, while accompanying a group that had despaired of not seeing blooming lavender fields at the lower altitudes during their stay, I called around to find out if there had been any lavender sightings that week. Armed with an answer, I then led the group on a long detour from our long-planned itinerary to the vast fields on the eastern side of the Valensole Plateau where, bingo, there it was. Though not the bright magenta or electric purple promised in the glossies or the shocking blue or dark violet seen in photowashed travelgrams, it was a sight to behold: a true pale herbal floral lavender dancing in the breeze atop rounded bushes that snaked in long curving rows pointing toward the Alps.

From year to year and zone to zone, blooming and harvest times will vary. Therefore, when asked to help travelers with planning months in advance of a trip, I advise them to think of colorful lavender fields as a treat rather than a destination so as to avoid breaking any hearts (and getting blamed when lavender dreams turn to dirt).

Learning about Lavender and Lavandin

Along with the pleasure to the eyes, shops throughout Provence sell lavender-scented and lavender-based products for the pleasure of the nose and of the skin—soaps, creams, perfumes, fragrances, sachets, etc.—and of the mouth in the case of lavender honey (the real kind from bees working in the lavender fields). For my taste, lavender honey can be too intensely lavender for most uses, but adding a few dabs to a baguette-and-butter breakfast tartine makes for a sweet and soothing start to the day.

You’ll find lavender products wherever you go in the region. Sénanque Abbey, for example, has a large selection in their shop of monastic products. Nearby, in Cabrières-d’Avignon, between L’Isle sur la Sorgue and Gordes, the Lavender Museum / Musée de la Lavande can teach you about the growing, harvesting and distilling of lavender.

This summer, I chose the Vallon des Lavandes Distillery and neighboring fields in the Sault countryside for our picture-perfect lavender education. The drive itself from the small town of Mazan, where we were staying, offered stunning views of Mont Ventoux before we rounded one final hill and the purple fields around Sault opened before us. Sault (pronounced so, not salt, with a short, crisp o) is on the Vaucluse edge of the Albion Plateau, which covers the corner where Drome, Vaucluse and Alpes du Haute Provence meet. The Albion Plateau is one of the major lavender producing areas of Provence and therefore, when in bloom, among its most photogenic.

So (pronounced Sault), after parking at the distillery, we took an easy and delightful hike along an outlined Lavender Trail. The area isn’t heavily trafficked, but be sure to watch for cars when walking on the road portion of the 5k/3mi trail. (If you drive around the plateau, don’t just stop in your tracks to take in a view but pull over to a secure area.) While you shouldn’t walk into the lavender fields out of respect for the plants and their owner’s private property, I know of no visitor who can resist stepping into the fields for a photo, including this one.

During a tour of its 1947 distillery, the staff at the Vallon de Lavande provides an excellent introduction to the planting and growth of lavender and its common hybrid lavandin and especially to the extraction of essential oils. Lavandin represents three-quarters of the harvest at the 45-hectare (111-acre) domain. It produces six times more oil than true lavender and contains far more camphor, while true lavender, we were told, currently sells for about 180€/kg, about eight times more than lavandin. Some 150kg of plant are required to extract 1kg of oil of true lavender. The deflowered plants serve as combustible for the distillation.

Since it can be quite hot in the afternoon in summer, better to hit the Lavender Trail in the morning, followed by a visit to the distillery. Then drive up the hill to the center of Sault for lunch. We enjoyed a nice meal and a wide view over the plateau from the back terrace of O Pichoun. We followed that up with a pleasant little walk-about in Sault and sniffed into several lavender shops before the pretty ride home.

Sault holds a festival to celebrate lavender in the middle of August, when any remaining flowers are usually cut down. Valensole holds its lavender festival in mid-July.

Sault Cyclists and Mont Ventoux

In Sault in summer, serious bikers abound in their tight shorts and click-clacking cycling shoes. That’s because Sault is a stop on or the starting point for three cycling loops for sporty road bikers:

– an athletic loop that follows the gorge of the Nesque River then back along the hills via Méthamis;
– a lavender-tinged loop along and around the Sault portion of the Albion Plateau,
– and a challenging, 24-km / 15-mi climb to the bald summit of Mont Ventoux, followed by a dangerously high-speed decent back toward Sault.

Regarding the ascension of Mont Ventoux, in-shape road cyclists and those on electric bikes might feel that the first 10 miles from Sault are no more than strenuous, but the true test of fitness comes with the final 10-degree assault. Though the climb from Sault is challenging, the other two ascension routes to the top of Ventoux—from Malaucène and from Bédoin—are even more so, which is why Sault makes for a more popular basecamp. The mountains summit has recently been made more cyclist and pedestrian friendly. Be sure to check the weather report before setting out.

Spelt and Goats

Along with sightings of lavender fields, fruit orchards (cherries, almonds, apricots, etc.) and the occasional sunflower field, you may not recognize fields of small spelt (petit épeautre in French), an ancient grain that’s at home in the hills and plateaus of Provence to the east of Ventoux in the departments of Vaucluse and Haute (Upper) Provence. You’ll find petit épeautre listed on menus as an accompaniment to fish and meat dishes in the region. It’s prepared in much the same way as rice. You may also come across some goats as you bike or drive through the region, which is to be expected given the abundance of goat cheese in the local food markets.

Addresses and further information

Lavender distillery: Sylvie and Thierry Barjot’s Vallon des Lavandes, 965 Route du Vallon (Ancienne route d’Aurel), Le Vallon, one mile north of the village of Sault. Open for free visits July and Aug. Mon-Sat. and upon reservation April-June and Sept.-Oct. See schedule here. There’s a small lavender shop on site.

For other lavender addresses in Vaucluse see here.

Restaurant: O Pichoun, Avenue de la Promenade, Sault. Ask to be seated on the back terrace. Reservations recommended in summer and weekends.

Hotel: In Sault, the 3-star Hôtel Le Nesk, popular with cyclists, can also be a stopover for lavender hunters.

Cycling: In preparing your cycling trip, a good resource is the official cycling site of the department of Vaucluse, which provides information on routes, rental shops, bike-friendly accommodations, luggage transportation services, etc.). But don’t hesitate to be a cyclist without borders so as to connect with the neighboring department of Drôme to the north and Alpes de Haute Provence to the east. In Sault, Albion Cycles, which rents and repairs bikes, can advise on local cycling routes once in the area. Cyclists can also follow portions of the extensive lavender routes described here.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Sault, Sénanque and the Successful Search for Lavender in Provence appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

From a riverside café to recent entries in Michelin stardom by way of a hilltop restaurant, a family-run institution, a contemporary inn and a basement chef’s table, these chefs and restaurants have been selected are based on my own experiences in 2020 and 2021 and on recommendations from gastronomes, both residents and travelers, whose suggestions I’ve solicited.

This list is not intended as a Vaucluse best-of-the-best but as a way of recognizing the variety of venues for a meal prepared with fresh ingredients and capable hands, in towns and villages of touristic interest in Vaucluse. Kind service was also (and always is) a criterion in selecting these restaurants.

There are certainly other worthy options in the region, and I will add them or eliminate others as I follow the Vaucluse culinary scene through my own travels and through suggestions from knowledgeable residents and travelers. Feel free to send write to me at gary [at] francerevisited.com with your comments about any of these chefs or restaurants or any others that you’ve enjoyed that I might consider in periodically updating this list.

Avignon

La Mirande, Avignon’s premier hotel, presents several eating options, now led by Florent Pietravalle at Le Restaurant. While acknowledging his Michelin stardom, I note that I’m particularly fond of La Mirande’s upbeat basement chef’s table, La Table Haute, where a chef and a commis prepare and present an excellent, semi-rustic meal while doing their best to ensure a convivial atmosphere. Chef Jeff Mouroux and his sidekick Alexandre Malinverno took on the task during my September visit to Avignon. Buyer beware: Despite the chefs’ best efforts, the atmosphere on any given evening depends heavily on the willingness of diners to engage with each other, so only go if you understand the word “conviviality,” and hope the others at your table do as well.
Mathieu Desmarest at Pollen, 18 rue Joseph Vernet, both refined and relaxed, was newly honored in 2021 with a Michelin star. Carte blanche dinner.
Pascal Barnouin at Maison de la Tour, 9 rue de la Tour.
The Hiély family continues to treat hungry diners from near and far to quality bistro fare at La Fourchette, 17 rue Racine.
Justine Imbert’s winning, unpretentious, modestly-priced cuisine kindly served beneath the branches in the charming back courtyard at Au Jardin des Carmes, 21 Place des Carmes. A chef to keep an eye on.
Jon Chiri, an American chef at Les Halles, the central food market of Avignon, was one of my guests on the France Revisited Culinary Conversation of June 29, 2021.
When it comes to the pleasures of sitting alfresco in Avignon, I’m inescapably drawn to Grand Café Baretta, 14 place Saint Didier.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Top culinary honors in the village go to Julien Richard’s gastronomy at La Mère Germaine, 3 rue Commandant Lemaitre, in the lower part of this hillside village. Meanwhile, in proper weather, my lunchtime appetite is drawn toward the top of the village, just below the chateau ruins, for a great view and reliably pleasing cuisine at Le Verger des Papes, 2 rue du Château. If you won’t be visiting wine producers out among the vineyards, you can begin your Chateauneuf-du-Pape education with a tasting of two or four wines in the atmospheric wine cellar of Le Verger des Papes. Pursue your education at Vinadéa, 8 rue Maréchal Foch, official boutique of the appellation.

Beaumes-de-Venise

Each evening of my two-night stay in Beaumes de Venise while on a biking trip began with an aperitif at the Café La Forêt “Le Siècle,” a local watering hole at 65 cours Jean Jaures. For dinner, La Table des Balmes, 31 place de l’Eglise, had a well-placed terrace for a satisfying meal in the center of the village. I was even more satisfied by my dinner the following evening in the semi-hidden setting of the semi-Provençale Auberge Saint Roch, 9 route de Caromb.

Vaison-la-Romain

And the buzz goes to… Christophe Wernet at the hip and creative bistro LUM, 55 rue Trogue Pompée.

Pernes-les-Fontaines

Hugues Marrec at Auberge de La Camarette, 439 chemin des Brunettes. La Camarette is une auberge, an inn, rather than un restaurant, says Hugues Marrec, because one doesn’t come to an auberge in search of an extensive menu but instead confident that that the chef is cooking up something worthwhile. Read my article about Chef Marrec here. He was also one of my guests on the France Revisited Culinary Conversation of June 29, 2021 His little inn has only two rooms, worth considering for a night or more if dining here.

Cavaillon

Prévôt, 353 avenue de Verdun, home to the melon king Jean-Jacques Prévôt, accompanied by his daughter Sandra-Rose. It’s been several years since I’ve eaten here, but my memory of Jean-Jacques’ warm and informative tableside manner and of the tasteful, fragrant fare that he prepared for our group of five diverse eaters (a vegan, a vegetarian and three omnivores), not to mention the trip report of recent visitors, keeps this restaurant on my Vaucluse list.

Mazan

Christophe Schuffenecker at La Salle à Manger,  8 place Napoléon, the gastronomic restaurant at the hotel Château de Mazan, four miles west of Carpentras. Awarded a Michelin star in 2021. Update: Christophe Schuffenecker has since left Mazan to manage his own restaurant, La Colombe, six miles north in Bédoin. It’s set to open in early spring 2022.

Fontaine de Vaucluse

Fontaine de Vaucluse, at the source of the Sorgue River, provides a breath of cool, damp air in an otherwise dry region. No need for an address for the friendly, traditional, family-run eatery Philip, just follow the path along the rushing waters leading to the fountain from which the river springs into daylight and you’ll reach it. The restaurant, created in 1926 by Isabelle and Gaston Philip, is now in its fourth generation of family ownership. There’s a fascinating story about the ownership of the land on which it sits. Ask about it when here.
La Figuière, 3 chemin des Gougette, gets a shoutout on the recommendation of traveling gastronomones who laud the hearty and traditional Provençale-leaning cuisine served here, in the shade.

L’Isle sur Sorgue

Enjoyable moments of refined simplicity by Daniel Hébert at Le Jardin du Quai, 91 avenue Julien Guigue, and by Benjamin Fabre at La Balade des Saveurs, 3 quai Jean Jaurès.

Roussillon

Among the ochre hills of Roussillon, Restaurant David at the hotel Le Clos de la Glycine, 1 place de la Poste. I’m adding this to the list on the recommendation of epicurean friends who recently had a deliciously soothing meal there while on a hiking trip in the Luberon.

Cadenet-Lourmarin

Nadia Sammut at Auberge La Fenière, 1680 route de Lourmarin (D943). At her gastronomic restaurant, Nadia Sammut’s precise, innovative cuisine and generous personality can restore the spirit of the fallen, as you can read about in this detailed article of mine. Also watch my Culinary Conversation with the chef here. La Fenière is also a hotel.

Maubec

One of the wonderful cliché fantasies of a stay in Provence involves going food shopping at a farmers or village market then returning, perhaps via vineyards or lavender fields, to a cozy kitchen where you’ll transform your fresh, local finds into tasty dishes while sipping Rhone Valley wines or a Provence rosé, in good cheer, in friendly company,… and in English. Which is why so many chefs in the region offer regular or occasional cooking classes. Jean-Marc Villard, 409B chemin du Carraire in Maubec, is one of them. Several of the other chefs or eateries noted on this list also occasionally offer cooking classes (La Mirande, Jon Chiri, Hugues Marrec, Nadia Sammut and others).

Food markets

A traveler in France would be remiss to not visit a food market, whether in a city, a town or a village. Among the most notable in Vaucluse are the Tuesday morning market at Vaison-La-Romaine, the Friday morning market in Carpentras, the Tuesday morning market at Gordes, the Thursday morning market at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, as well as the daily (except Monday) central food market Les Halles in Avignon. Plug in a day and/or town on this map to find a nearby food market while traveling in Vaucluse.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut.

The post Cuisine in Provence: Notable Chefs and Restaurants in the Vaucluse Region appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Several miles short of Auberge La Fenière, my destination on day one of a solitary cycling tour of the Luberon region of Provence, I mistimed braking for a village speed bump and landed on the tarmac, tangled in my bike. The car coming up behind me was far enough back to stop well before reaching me. A car coming in the opposite direction slowed down and stopped alongside. The driver rolled down her window and asked if she should call for help. I stood up, pulled my bike to the side of the road, picked up my saddlebags, and told the driver that I was alright. I twisted the front wheel back straight, uncoiled and reset the brake lines, bent the mud guard back into position, and set off wobbly on the final miles to La Fenière, thinking all the way, “Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.”

I wasn’t alright. I was battered, bleeding and my ribs hurt. Already I was late arriving at La Fenière, a property (hotel, restaurants, vegetable garden, pool) that owner-chef Nadia Sammut calls a “lieu de vie” or living space. Earlier in the afternoon, I’d lost my way—allowed myself to lose my way—on the slopes of the Luberon Massif and dawdled along its vantage points. I’d planned to arrive at least an hour earlier so as to check in, shower, speak with Nadia, then rest up before dinner. “We’ve been expecting you,” said the receptionist, and seeing my bloody forearm, “Oh my, what happened?” “A little accident.” “Do you want me to call someone? Do you want to go to the hospital?” “No, but if you have some bandages that would help.” She gave me an emergency kit with bandages and antiseptic.

Up in my room—a bright, peaceable space with a long view of the back of the property and the nearby hillside—I looked at myself in the mirror. I was banged up alright. My ribs and thigh and wrist were sore. I had three more days of biking ahead of me. Should I call it quits now? I cleaned and bandaged myself. The bleeding—rough scrapes but no gashes—would soon stop. How badly was I injured? I couldn’t tell. But I shivered at the thought of how lucky I was, aware that my fall could have been worse, much worse. (Yes, I was wearing a helmet.) I had a reservation for the second seating at the restaurant, so I napped for an hour then went downstairs.

As I reached the lobby, I saw Nadia passing through the patio dining area and the kitchen. I introduced myself and apologized for arriving too late to speak with her earlier. In the rush of dinner I had a first glimpse of her generosity of spirit. “I hear you had an accident,” she said, “Are you alright?” I assured her that I was. She said, “We’ll take care of you,” she said, “and we have all morning tomorrow to talk, if you’d like.”

Ernest Hung Do, the sommelier and maître d’, came over to my table to say hello. I told him that I’d just had a “little biking accident” and could use something strong, say, whiskey, to start. He went inside and returned with a bottle of perfumed gin. He explained how and where it was made. But rather than pour a glass, he told me that he didn’t recommend that I have it. Nadia’s meal is constructed to evolve from dish to dish, he explained, and strong alcohol would affect its proper unfolding.

“What do you recommend instead?” I asked.

“Why not just let the meal express itself and I’ll bring some wine?” he said.

“Fine,” I said, “I’d rather not make choices tonight anyway. I’ll follow your lead, and Nadia’s.”

Two dozen peas and a verbena leaf

Nadia Sammut is a culinary explorer. The 12 or so dishes of the 160€ “expérience” tasting menu proceed through a fluid evolution of ingredients and textures that awaken the senses, from the intentionally bland opening to the iodized middle to the smooth finish. (There’s also a 120€ “découverte” tasting menu, but no à la carte menu.)  Nadia’s quest isn’t so much to astonish, I think, but to create harmony. Ernest’s, too, for that matter; the meal was accompanied by Ernest’s coherent yet unobtrusive wine pairing.

“Precise” is how I thought of the slow parade of small dishes that evening, while “consciousness” is a term that Nadia Sammut applies to her culinary approach. The two terms meet in what appeared to be the simplest of dishes: two dozen peas and a verbena leaf the size of a daisy petal. Deceptively simple, though the full description of the dish is more complex: petit pois, crème de placenta de fève, verveine, bourrache, cardamone noire râpée, huile du domaine de Jasson. Still, I can only think of the dish as two dozen peas and a verbena leaf, and for me it lit up the patio. It was my satori moment.

Yes, it’s a dish that can easily be ridiculed: She charges how much for two dozen peas and a tiny leaf? But there you have it, the appetizer through which I realized that such culinary moments are a way of bringing one into oneself: one’s taste buds, one’s environment, one’s sense of self and of a shared meal, both with one’s table companion(s), if any, and with diners at other tables with whom you might never exchange a word. I hadn’t forgotten the physical nature of my fall several hours earlier, but I was no longer restrained by the trauma of it or by my awareness that the following day or two would reveal the full extent of my injuries. Two dozen peas and a verbena leaf allowed me to settle into the—do I dare use the word?—enlightenment of the meal, the surroundings, the evening and my travels into the Luberon. What a beautiful biking day it had been, landing me here!

No, I wasn’t cured from my fall. But I was, for the moment, soothed of it and conscious above all that it could have been much worse. (Five days later I would consult my doctor in Paris. As impressed as he was that I’d continued biking for three days after the fall, he told me that he would have recommended against it. He sent me for x-rays of my left wrist and right ribs. Turns out that I had broken a bone in my wrist, though it was the ribs, apparently without fracture, that hurt more.) But for now, I was pleased with my good fortune of feeling well enough to experience dinner at La Fenière and digesting my trauma while enjoying a precise and natural gastronomy, Nadia Sammut’s gastronomy of nature.

There are greater traumas, of course, not all of which can be soothed by kind service, a good meal and a peaceable setting. Still, all traumas need to be digested, don’t they? Linguistic aristocrats and associated snobs in France will tell you that it’s gauche to wish fellow diners a “bon appétit” before a meal; “appétit,” they’ll say with condescension, refers to the unpleasantries of digestion, which isn’t something one should mention at a polite table. But digesting one’s worries and traumas and anxieties is clearly commendable and worth wishing on one another, like raising a glass to each other’s good health. Furthermore, Nada, having dealt with celiac disease, naturally and implicitly wishes a healthy, nourishing digestion for all of her guests. Bon appétit for sure.

Gluten-free and rooted in Provence

Nadia’s “cuisine libre” (free cooking) approach, as she calls it, is neither a refusal of nor in opposition to the cuisine(s) of Provence. She remains deeply rooted in the region. Her family has lived in the Luberon for several generations. In 1972, her grandmother opened a little bistro in an old hayloft, called une fenière in Provence, in the village of Lourmarin. She then worked with her son, Nadia’s father. And when he married, his wife, Reine, learned how to cook alongside her mother-in-law. Reine Sammut eventually took over the restaurant and, in 1995, became one of the rare women in France at the time to receive a Michelin star for her cuisine. Well-known throughout Provence and beyond, Reine prepared rather traditional gastronomy. In 1996, Nadia’s parents then bought the property that is La Fenière’s current location in the countryside between Lourmarin and Cadenet. Though no longer installed in a hayloft, they brought the name with them.

At around the age of 30, between 2009 and 2011, Nadia was often quite ill from celiac disease. She says that she was basically bedridden for two years. As she explained during our lengthy conversation the morning after my dinner experience, “I said to myself, ‘This can’t be! With my culinary heritage I have to learn an inclusive approach to food that’s respectful of the environment and respect of individuals while being gastronomic and delicious.’”

She began working with her mother in 2015, soon taking the reins of Reine’s kitchen. In 2017, Nadia herself was awarded the Michelin star for La Fenière. Reine stayed with her in the gastronomic restaurant for another year, at which point, as Nadia tells it, her mother said, “You’ve got do it alone now because you have your vision, your intentions, your recipes, and it’s important that you continue to convey them.”

Though celiac disease is a significant part of Nadia’s personal story and of the development of the culinary explorations that have given her much recognition, she would rather not have her cuisine labeled solely as gluten-free. People come for the experience, she says, not for their celiac problems. Of course, there’s often a table or two where someone will speak with her about their digestive issues because they know of her personal experience. She doesn’t mind. She’s had clients who arrive in culinary distress, worried about every little thing they might eat, and she aims to calm them down. “By the second dish,” she says, “they’ve relaxed and are simply happy to be having a good meal, and that sense of happiness extends to the rest.”

Had I not known in advance that the meal would be gluten-free I doubt that I would have noticed. Presented with the chestnut bread, I thought, hmm, chestnut bread—and it was delicious—and then chick-pea bread—that too—without wondering about the absence of gluten. (Nadia operates a mill for the various flours that she then uses in her breads and other flour-based products that are served in the restaurant and available in specialty stores.) Just as one doesn’t think when eating a good piece of fish that it doesn’t taste like beef, one simply enjoys the dish. (Omnivores, by the way, drawn in by the evolution of the meal and the discovery of each small dish, might not even notice that that none of the dishes contains meat.)

“I have no obligations in my cooking,” says Nadia. “First, I don’t cook traditionally because I can’t, so for me there’s an enormous field of permanent research on plants, on living things, on the way to present naturalness and simplicity.”

Asked about her relationship with traditional Provençale cuisine, Nadia claims a clear and present affinity with it, including the techniques that she learned in part from her mother. “Provence,” she says, “has developed its culinary techniques in relation to the products that were available to work with. Provençale cuisine is also that of economy. People paid attention to what went into their cuisine; they didn’t throw anything away. Provençale cuisine is very plant-based. It’s a distinct yet varied cuisine comprised of different smaller regions. People don’t eat the same way in Marseille or in the Camargue or here in the Luberon. Its diversity is quite beautiful and should be brought to light. Its recipes, its beautiful recipes, haven’t been extinguished, and they need to be created and recreated, transmitted from generation to generation. The heart is transmitted with them, that’s a beautiful part of the energy of life.”

Regenerative and holistic

I’d arrived on opening night, so to speak, June 9, 2021, the first evening that La Fenière was welcoming diners since its 2020 Covid closing and months of evening curfew. Dining out without watching the clock was new to all of us, a time of renewal, particularly for those who, like me, prefer a late or second seating in a restaurant.

Nadia uses the term régénérateur—regenerative, something that makes you feel replenished—in speaking of the environment that she set out to create at La Fenière. That environment extends beyond the gastronomic restaurant to include the bistro on the property, the lodging, the landscape, the service, the swimming pool, the kitchen garden, the occasional activities and workshops, and the overall atmosphere. She speaks of the importance of being “conscious” of oneself and one’s environment.

“What’s essential in my life and what I think I’m able to offer others is that sense of self-awareness. To do so requires being connected to both matter and nature. And I believe that the best way to let go is to feel good, to have a sense of trust in a place, to be conscious of where one is. All that is regenerative… I like that people feel good and, beyond feeling good, that there’s a kind of interaction with themselves.”

Nadia is generous enough with her time and spirit to interact with clients if they wish, even during the meal. As she put the finishing touches on dishes in a corner of the dining patio the evening of my visit, diners would occasionally get up to see what she was doing, to ask her questions, and Nadia willingly engaged with them. She came by each table twice to deliver and explain a dish.

My most frequent interaction that evening, however, was with Ernest Hung Do, the sommelier and maître d’, a gentle, knowing, kind presence throughout the meal. Ernest came to France from Vietnam as an infant, his family having fled the country in waves of refugees known as “boat people.” As a young man, he became particularly interested in fish and became a sushi master with his own restaurant. He was named best sushi master in France one year. In 2013, he sold his restaurant since he’d become increasingly interested in all things vegetal, a move from the sea to the earth. He met Nadia’s sister, a food journalist, in Marseille, and her sister said, “You and Nadia speak the same way about food, you should meet.” That was seven years ago. They have been together ever since, as companions and as business partners. “We truly work in synergy together,” says Nadia. I asked Ernest, given his background as a chef, why didn’t he want to work alongside Nadia in the kitchen? “Because I wanted to leave her with her vision in the kitchen while presenting her cuisine and wine to clients.” He does an excellent job of it. (He credits Nadia’s father as one of his mentors in learning about wine.)

“What I do, I believe, is goes beyond the dish,” says Nadia. “I like to lead people to ask themselves questions. When you start out with something that’s bland, you ask yourself ‘Why bland?’ But what’s bland is essential for digestion, it’s essential in silence, in calm. And then something rises up, for example on the shrimp. What especially interests me is that people feel and have sensations. Of course, the dish is a part of an overall experience, and it’s essential that everything about that dish be precise. Then once you have that precision you can talk about everything else. That’s where a meal goes beyond the dishes themselves.”

Each dish grabs attention for its finesse and balance. Following the aforementioned shrimp—it was a raw Mediterranean shrimp with a squid ink emulsion, with a squid ink “chip” that nearly struck me as enlightening as the verbena leaf—the fluidity and complex harmony of a cream of bitter lettuce with an oyster in a sourdough tempura was my favorite dish. After that, the rouille in a dish called “memory of a bouillabaisse” was a discovery in and of itself.

Here’s how Nadia describes her inspiration for the penultimate dish, chickpea ice cream served with a shot of rum: “When I opened that rum a few weeks ago—it’s a friend of mine who makes it, Guillaume Ferroni, in Aubagne [near Marseille], aged in casks sometimes from Rasteau and in this case from Beaumes de Venise—when I opened that rum I said to myself, “Ah, that’s it, that’s what I want to feel,” because even though I don’t drink alcohol, just smelling it made me feel something. I don’t want sugar in my cuisine because sugar releases dopamine, which is quite different than serotonin. I want to work with serotonin, what’s called the hormone of happiness, not the hormone of pleasure. Happiness is more intense; it’s a lot more timeless. It’s something that awakens the interior of our body, not just to make us say ‘Wow’ but to make us conscious, which is much greater.”

“Wow,” is what I also said to myself when I tried the chickpea ice cream and rum. A warm honey-and-chestnut madeleine then served as an endnote to the meal.

La Fenière, a living space

Nadia’s gastronomic restaurant is the centerpiece La Fenière but there are other aspects to the property as well. Above the restaurant, in the main building on the property, there are 12 bedrooms, created in 2017. Nadia plans to develop 30 more lodgings on the opposite end of the property in the form of ecolodges. There’s also a second restaurant on the property, a Mediterranean bistro called La Cour du Ferme. There’s a swimming pool. There are hiking paths. Small-group activities are sometimes organized, such as cooking workshop taught by Nadia on Saturday mornings. Yet I wouldn’t call La Fenière a resort. It’s homier than that. There’s no grand décor, no ostentation. More boutiquish, more palatial, more photogenic accommodations are found elsewhere in the Luberon. What then to call this place?

Nadia calls La Fenière a “lieu de vie” or living space, a place of “positive living, of regeneration and of inspiration,” where guests are invited to “participate in the world in which they wish to live.” That may sound too psychic or new-age for some travelers looking to explore the landscapes and villages of the Luberon, though having stated her goal, Nadia doesn’t demand or expect obedience. She would just like visitors to slow down and be conscious of their surroundings. Thus, the hotel has a two-night minimum.

To me, La Fenière is a cultured, unglamorous countryside estate with an earthy restaurant—an earthy restaurant with an exquisite, inventive, sophisticated, earth-and-seaworthy 160€ tasting menu, but an earthy restaurant nonetheless.

An olive tree stands at the center of the patio around which, weather permitting, the tables are set. A concert of frogs played nearby as I sat at one of them that evening. As their song softened, I became aware of the sound of a bees buzzing in the yard and of Ernest’s soft steps over the paving stones. Was it a form of shock from my fall or a form of denial that I may have fractured my ribs or broken my wrist? Whatever it was, that evening at La Fenière I was one happy, regenerated, conscious traveler.

La Fenière, D943, 84160 Cadenet 84160. Tel. +33 (0)4 90 68 11 79. A 2-night minimum is required at the hotel. The gastronomic restaurant is open only when Nadia is present. The bistro remains open even when she is not. Those staying at the hotel on a Friday evening should ask in advance if Nadia will be giving a cooking class on Saturday morning. Cooking classes are also open to those not staying at the hotel.

Near La Fenière in the southern Luberon: The château and village of Lourmarin; a shaded seat in a café or restaurant by the water basin at Cucuron; olive oil tasting at Bastide du Laval; Mérindol and the history of Waldensian (les Vaudois); the 12th-century Cisterian Silvacane Abbey at La Roque d’Anthéron; the garden conservatory for plants used for dying and coloring in Lauris. Tourist information about the village and the entire Luberon region of Provence can be obtained at the Lourmarin tourist office, Place Henri Barthélémy. The Luberon is in the Vaucluse department or sub-region of Provence. For more articles about Vaucluse see here.

A Video Culinary Conversation with Nadia Sammut

Nadia Sammut was one of my guests at a France Revisited Culinary Conversation with three chefs of the Vaucluse area of Provence, along with Jon Chiri and Hugues Marrec, on June 29, 2021. Nadia appears in the introductory portion of Part 1 and then again for nearly all of Part 2. I invite you to watch at least the first 10 minutes of Part 1 in order to situate Nadia in the region and among the three chefs that I selected for this culinary conversation before proceeding to Part 2, here:

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

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Hugues Marrec named his eatery une auberge or inn, rather than un restaurant because, he says, one doesn’t come to an auberge in search of an extensive menu but in the belief that that the chef will be cooking up something satisfying. And satisfying it was when I biked by for dinner and then stayed the night in one of the inn’s two bedrooms.

Auberge de La Camarette, where he offers a 38€ fixed-price menu, including wine, is situated within Domaine de La Camarette, a wine estate managed by his wife Nancy and her sister, located just outside the pleasing little town of Pernes-les-Fontaines, a dozen miles east of Avignon and four miles south of Carpentras.

Without aspiring to the moniker “gastronomic restaurant,” and shunning the term “semi-gastronomic,” Hugues’s culinary approach might best be described as polished, straightforward terroir. “When you’re surrounded by good fresh products you can’t help but want to cook with them,” he says. Indeed, one need only bike or drive around the Vaucluse area of Provence for a few days to glimpse the variety of local agriculture in the area. La Camarette itself, in addition to vineyard, has an olive orchard as well as wheat, barley and chick-pea fields. The herbs and lemons that Hugues uses in his kitchen come from the family garden. The vegetables may come from neighboring farms. The eggs come from Pernes. If there’s rabbit on the menu it will come from a local producer, the lamb from the Apilles area of Provence, the pork from Ventoux area, and the bull from the Camargue, in the Rhone delta.

If you’re put off by eating beets during beet season or eggplant during eggplant season, blame Mother Nature rather than Hugues Marrec.

It isn’t just the products that are local but a sizable share of the clientele as well. “My clientele is used to making traditional Provençale dishes at home, so that’s not what they come here for,” he says, “other than the occasional daube in winter.” While his isn’t Provençale cuisine in its traditional sense, Chef Marrec clearly prepares a cuisine of Provence. More leeway is given for the choice of fish, which may come from the rivers of Provence or from the Mediterranean or the Atlantic. After all, it would be a shame to refuse a Brittany-born chef the possibility to prepare saltwater fish.

In 1998, at the age of 20, Hugues went to Sun Valley, Idaho, to work, as a commis (assistant) chef. One year later, he was promoted to head chef at one of the resort’s restaurants, proof of both the quality of his training in France and of his ability to adapt and flourish. He lived in Sun Valley at two different periods before the age of 24, for a total of 3½ years, and may well have stayed longer had visas for French not been reduced during the Freedom Fry era of the Second Gulf War. He’s also worked in the UK and in Ireland.

Early in his stay in Sun Valley, Hugues met Nancy Gontier, a Frenchwoman his age from Provence—Pernes-les-Fontaines to be exact. Nancy had come to Sun Valley as an intern in the hospitality industry. After leaving Sun Valley, he and Nancy stayed in touch as they went their separate ways to pursue their respective careers, then met up again when they were both working in London.

In 2006, the two settled in Nancy’s hometown, more specifically her home vineyard. Domaine de La Camarette has been in the Gontier family for several generations. Nancy’s grandparents arrived in the area from Algeria in the early 1960s, where her grandfather’s family, winegrowers in Algeria for several generations, already had connections. Her grandfather purchased La Camarette to develop its farming and vines. (It’s called Camarette because long ago the farm belonged to a certain Camaret family.) The vineyard portion of Domaine de La Camarette covers 45 hectares (111 acres), producing Ventoux appellation wines for the most part—Ventoux being a blend, mostly grenache, syrah and mourdevre—while also producing some single-grape IGP (Protected Geographical Indication) Mediterranée wines: 100% syrah (red), 100% sauvignon blanc (white), 100% mourvèdre (rosé).

Once here, Hugues worked in a restaurant in the vicinity while pondering and preparing for the opening of a restaurant at La Camarette in May 2008. He initially ran it as a one-man kitchen, with Nancy doing the service. But they had a child (they now have two) and it soon proved to be too difficult for the couple to manage everything. Furthermore, Nancy, was managing the wine estate, where her sister would join her in 2009. So he added personnel at the restaurant, which has since expanded.

The 17th-century farm building that is now the inn was created around an earlier bread oven that’s still visible inside. The restaurant is open year-round other than during short vacation periods. Weather permitting (typically May to mid-September), meals are served in the shaded courtyard in front of the building.

Stay away if you require several options on a menu because a meal at Auberge de La Camarette is a 3-course fixed-price affair consisting of a set appetizer, a choice of two main courses (one fish, one meat), and dessert. Included in the price of the meal, currently 38€, are an aperitif and two glasses of wine from Domaine de La Camarette. There is also a wine list for those who would prefer a bottle from elsewhere. A cheese course is proposed at a supplement. The menu changes weekly. There’s no menu online, and Hugues would rather not tell those who call what’s on the menu in a given week. It isn’t that he wants to keep it secret but he’d rather have guests arrive with a willing and open appetite. For indecisive diners, Hugues says, an added advantage of a set menu is that it removes “the stress of the restaurant experience.”

Rest assured, the dishes are recognizable; you’re unlikely to be confronted with something unknown, unusual or artsy. There’s always a choice been a fish and a meat dish, and vegetarians (probably not vegans) can be accommodated if they let their server know that when they arrive. The evening I ate at La Camarette, the main-course choice was between cod and rabbit. The following week the choice was between local trout and duck. Duck was also on the menu when a friend dined at La Camarette and sent me this beauty shot.

Auberge de La Camarette, 439 Chemin des Brunettes, 84210 Pernes les Fontaines. Tel.: +33 (0)4 90 61 60 78.

The inn has two comfortable bedrooms, one at 80-90€/night, the at other 90-105€, including breakfast. Each has its own bathroom. I can well imagine this as a choice stop for two couples or friends traveling together or for a family of three or four. Those staying overnight may well have an opportunity to chat with Hugues and will also be able to have a thorough tasting of Nancy’s wines at the vineyard. There’s a small swimming pool and a shelter for bikes for those on a cycling tour. Next door to the inn, Hugues and Nancy operate two guest houses available for weekly rental. Hugues also conducts occasional cooking workshops.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

A Culinary Conversation with Hugues Marrec

Hugues Marrec was one of my guests at a France Revisited Culinary Conversation with three chefs of the Vaucluse area of Provence, along with Jon Chiri and Nadia Sammut, on June 29, 2021. Hugues appears in Part 1 then again for several minutes in Part 2. See the timeline.

In Part 1, below, the conversation proceeds as follows:

0:00:00 Gary Lee Kraut’s introduction
0:00:44 The 3 chefs introduce themselves
0:02:00 Why these 3 chefs?
0:04:15 Situating the Vaucluse region of Provence where the 3 chefs are located
0:07:45 Some agricultural products grown in Provence
0:10:33 Conversation with Jon Chiri
0:25:28 Conversation with Hugues Marrec

In Part 2, below, the conversation proceeds as follows:

0:00:00 Introduction to Part 2 of this Culinary Conversation
0:00:15 Gary Lee Kraut introduces Nadia Sammut
0:03:15 Nadia Sammut, her background, her cuisine, her philosophy
0:28:14 What is Hugues Marrec preparing for dinner tonight?
0:32:45 What is Nadia Sammut preparing?
0:35:48 Gary’s endnote

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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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France is a golfing country? Who knew?

Turns out lots of people, including the 410,000 members of the French Golf Federation and hundreds of thousands of occasional players swinging and putting away at 733 clubs and on over 600 courses of 9+ holes.

And the world’s foremost golfers knew as well since France will be hosting this year’s Ryder Cup from September 28 to 30. Twenty-four of America’s and Europe’s top players will meet in the biennial USA vs. Europe match play contest at Le Golf National, 18 miles southwest of the heart of the Paris in Guyancourt, just beyond Versailles.

Held every two years since 1927, other than during WWII, and, skipping 2001, on even years since 2002, the Ryder Cup has grown from a U.S.-England competition to a U.S.-UK and Ireland competition to a U.S.-Europe affair since 1973. Alternating between an American venue and a European venue, this is the first time the event is being held in France.

That represents top-flight confirmation that France takes its golf seriously. It’s also the occasion to shine a light on some of the most prestigious courses and resorts in choice destinations throughout the country, from Normandy to Basque Country to the Riviera and Provence by way of world-class courses within easy reach of Paris.

Introduced into France by English visitors in the second half of the 19th century, golf initially developed wherever there was a significant colony of British residents and vacationers: Pau, which had first course in continental Europe, the Basque Coast, the Rivera, Brittany, Normandy.

Here is a selection of top golf clubs, courses and resorts throughout France, particularly those in areas where golf can be combined with tourism. The map shows their location throughout France. Also see Gold Digest’s list of best golf courses in France for this year.

Within easy reach of Paris
The greater Paris region and just beyond comprise France’s premier golfing zone. Among the dozens of courses within easy reach of the capital, a trio of prestigious clubs are within putting distance of the major palaces: Versailles, Fontainebleau and Chantilly. Well, maybe not putting distance, but certainly a quick drive. So a visitor to the capital can easily opt of a golfing daytrip, while the rest of the family heads to palace.

I take that back. There’s no reason to choose between golfing and touring. At Versailles, for example, you can stay the luxurious Hôtel Trianon Palace located just outside the palace gates and easily fit a half day at Le Golf National on your itinerary. The club’s world-class Albatros course is just six miles southwest of Versailles. The Trianon Palace is the official base camp for the two teams during the Ryder Cup.

South of Paris, Golf de Fontainebleau is a historic course in Fontainebleau Forest, less than a mile from the palace, making for an especially easy golf-and-palace daytrip or overnight from the capital. Though redesigned over the years, the course still bears some of the marks of Tom Simpson, the British course designer who was behind a half dozen courses in France, including Chantilly and Morfontaine on the opposite side of Paris.

North of Paris, Golf de Chantilly is also less than a mile from the palace of Chantilly.

Normandy
Deauville, the queen of Normandy resort towns, has four courses nearby, including Golf Barrière Deauville. Deauville is an hour’s drive from the center of the D-Day Landing Zone.

A simpler way to combine golf with war touring is to include in your itinerary a round at the Omaha Beach Golf Club. The course and club house may be less dashing than most of the others on this list, but its situation on the cliff between Omaha Beach and Port-en-Bessin makes it an easy fit into any touring schedule. Here’s your schedule: Utah, Omaha, golf, Gold, Juno, Sword. Supreme Allied Commander-cum-President-cum World Golf Hall of Famer Dwight Eisenhower, who installed a putting green on the White House lawn, would be proud of you.

Le Touquet Golf Resort, is a fine course that’s also by the English Channel, just north of Normandy in Upper France.

Loire Valley
Castle + garden, castle + biking, castle + vineyard, castle + fine dining, castle + golf. There, I’ve just created your itinerary for a few days in the Loire Valley. Les Bordes at the northeastern end of the heart of the Loire Valley, between Orleans and Blois, is the course of choice in the region.

The Bordeaux Region
We all enjoy a good wine pairing: wine and cheese, wine and women, wine and song. How about wine and golf? Pair your saint emilion grand cru classés with the Tom Doak-designed course at the Grand Saint Emilionnais Golf Club. Pair your haut-médoc, perhaps even your margaux, with Golf du Médoc, 12 miles north of Bordeaux.

Basque Country and the Landes
Golf got an early foothold in the southwest corner of France due to it being a destination for wealthy British travelers in the second half of the 19th century. Golf de Biarritz Le Phare, created in 1888, was among the first. A century later it was joined by Golf d’Ilbarritz, an accompanying training center.

Golf d’Hossegor is a 45-minute drive to the north from Biarritz, where Basque Country gives way to the pines and cork oaks of the Landes region.

Côte d’Azur: The Riviera and nearby hills of Provence
Given the wealth and lavish hotels along the Riviera, the nearby hills of Provence naturally offer an abundance of locations for luxurious puttering about. That’s why the Côte d’Azur region recently created a golf pass covering 20 courses. The pass is especially intended for those who would like to tour the area via its golf courses by offering special pricing for a 2- or 4-course vacation in fall and winter and for 4-course stay in spring and summer. Many of the venues lie in the Antibes-Cannes-Mandelieu-Grasse zone.

The first golf course created along the Mediterranean was developed in the 1890s at the request of an exiled Russian grand duke who had previously encountered the sport at St. Andrews in Scotland. Cannes-Mandelieu’s Old Course Golf is the heir to that first course.

A few miles inland from Cannes and on the edge of Mougins, a town known for its annual culinary festival, Royal Mougins Golf Resort is among the most prestigious in the region.

Further afield and an exclusive world unto itself lies the Terre Blanche resort.

Corsica
As far as golf courses go, you can’t get any more Mediterranean in France than Golf de Spérone in Bonifacio on the southern tip of Corsica.

For a complete listing of golf courses in France see Tous les Golfs.

General admission tickets for match play at this year’s Ryder Cup, Sept. 28-30, sold out long ago, but ticket packages are available at publication time. General admission during the three days of team practice and other events leading up to the contest are also still available.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

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In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany, the Camp des Milles interned so-called “enemy subjects,” largely meaning citizens of Germany and Austria living in France, in more than 240 camps around the country, including a former tile factory in the village of Les Milles. By the following June Les Milles was known as the camp of artist due to some 3500 artists and intellectuals being detained there. Among them was Lion Feuchtwanger, a Jewish German writer.

Born in Munich in 1884, the son of a Jewish factory owner, Feuchtwanger became a well-known writer who tried to warn the world about the dangers of Hitler and the Nazi party. As early as the 1920s he predicted many of the Nazis’ crimes in his book “Conversations with the Wandering Jew.” His book “Jud Süß” (Süss the Jew) would be distorted by the Nazis, who turned it into an anti-Semitic feature film. Heinrich Himmler had it shown to SS units and Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads about to be sent east on their murderous assignments.

When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Feuchtwanger was on a book tour in the United States. There he met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. While in the U.S. he learned of the confiscation of his properties in Germany and the burning of his books. The German Ambassador to the U.S. advised Feuchtwanger not to return to his homeland. He took his advice but returned to Europe. Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta settled down with other German exiles in the seaside town of Sanary-sur-Mer, between Bandol and Toulon in southern France.

“We were in paradise, against our will,” he wrote. Although his books were banned from publication in Germany, the high circulations of translations enabled Feuchtwanger to have a comparatively comfortable life in exile until the outbreak of the war.

It was then, in September 1939, that Feuchtwanger, like other Germans and Austrians living in exile in France, was first interned at the Camps des Milles. Remarking on the irony of the internment of what were essentially anti-Nazi refugees, he wrote: “the responsible authorities know perfectly well that the spies, the saboteurs, the Nazi sympathizers were to be sought quite elsewhere than among us.” Recognizing this, the authorities released Feuchtwanger after several weeks.

The Devil in France

But the war situation and the attitude of the French government changed in early 1940 Feuchtwanger was arrested and interned there a second time. In his memoir “The Devil in France” he speaks of the deplorable conditions of that internment.

Republished in English by USC (University of Southern California) Libraries in 2010, The Devil in France (subtitled “My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940”) provides an intimate account of Feuchtwanger’s thoughts, snippets of his conversations and details of his survival tactics. Although Les Milles was not a work camp, Feuchtwanger recalled how, “under the sharp command of a sergeant,” he and his fellow inmates were forced to make neatly stacked piles of bricks. The bricks would later be torn down and piled up in another place. It made him think of the verse from Exodus “in which,” he wrote, “the children of Israel are forced to bake bricks for Pharaoh of Egypt to build the treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses.” So he chanted “Pithom Raamses… Pithom–Raamses” as he mechanically tossed bricks to his neighbor.

In the memoir he tells about the tiles, the bricks, the cramped spaces, making his bed directly on the floor out of straw, setting it off with more bricks, breathing in dust until his lungs bled and dust even in their inadequate food, the boredom, the lack of privacy. When not lifting bricks, the inmates spent much of their days in the dimly lit dormitories.

In the morning, he wrote, there were long lines to go outside to a handful of filthy latrines that were controlled by Foreign Legion detainees, some of whom had fought for France for decades and were maimed. One could tip the Legionnaires to get moved up to the front of the line. The Legionnaires also ran much of the camp’s black market.

The inmates organized cultural activities in their fight against boredom and dehumanization. Feuchtwanger eloquently describes a cabaret club set up in the brick oven area of the camp, where they could mobilize their creativity and artistic talents. They called it the Catacomb, after a Berlin nightclub closed by Goebbels in the mid-1930s.

Feuchtwanger lived to write about his experiences because he managed to escape at the end of the summer of 1940, before the French began participating in the delivery of Jews to Nazi death camps. His wife Marta orchestrated his escape. At that time, he, along with other prisoners of Les Milles, had been moved to a makeshift tent camp near Nîmes. The prisoners were allowed to bathe every afternoon at a small river in the middle of the afternoon. This proved to be the perfect time of day to engineer an escape and smuggle him out disguised as an English woman and take him to Marseille.

There, Marta was assisted by the American vice consul in Marseille, Hiram Bingham IV, who was known for liberally issuing visas to help refugees, in defiance of State Department policy. Bingham arranged to have a picture of a grim and gaunt Feuchtwanger behind the barbed wires of the Milles Camp sent to America. Feuchtwanger’s publisher, Ben Huebsch of Viking Press, had friends show the picture to Eleanor Roosevelt, who made the president aware of the situation. An emergency visa was then issued, unofficially, in view of the American policy of neutrality during that period. Feuchtwanger was therefore added to a list of prominent artists and intellectuals, most wanted by Hitler and therefore in great jeopardy, to be rescued by the American Emergency Rescue Operations run by the American journalist Varian Fry.

From Marseille he undertook a dangerous journey through Spain and Portugal. Realizing that even in Portugal any delay to get on a boat to the United States could be fatal for a man wanted by the Nazis, Martha Sharp, a Unitarian minister’s wife, gave up her own berth on the Excalibur so that Feuchtwanger could sail immediately for New York City. His wife Marta obtained passage two weeks later.

Feuchtwanger was living in California and had published his memoir of his internment by the time Camp des Milles experienced its darkest days. In the summer of 1942, some 2,000 Jewish men, women and children rounded up in the southern France were interned at the Camp des Milles before deportation to Auschwitz, where they were exterminated. While the Germans never asked that children be deported, French minister Pierre Laval insisted that they be deported as well. At Les Milles this is given its full impact by the Serge Klarsfeld exhibition that commemorates the 11,400 Jewish children deported from the whole of France to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944.

Feuchtwanger died in Los Angeles in 1958. After his death, his wife Marta willed their house Villa Aurora and his extensive personal library to the University of Southern California. Villa Aurora, a historic landmark, is now an artist residence.

Visiting the Camp des Milles

On September 10, 2012, exactly seventy years after the last train convoy left from Les Milles for the Auschwitz death camp, the Memorial-Site of the Camp des Milles was opened to the public. In 2015 UNESCO launched its new Chair for Education for Citizenship, Human Sciences and Shared Memories there. The Chair focuses on research and activism centered on the history of the Holocaust, citizenship and the prevention of genocide.

The historical section: A visit to the Memorial-Site of the Camp des Milles begins with a rich and compelling collection of displays, audiovisual pieces and illustrations in French and English dedicated to understanding the historical background to the threats that escalated across Europe between 1919 and 1939, to the individual destinies of those interned and to the history of France’s Vichy government. Displays document the general history of internment camps in France under the country’s Third Republic (i.e. prior to the summer of 1940) and under the Vichy regime. It recounts in detail the history of the Milles Camps where some 10,000 people of 38 nationalities were interned during the war. It also focuses on the perpetration of the Jewish genocide on a European scale and its implementation in Les Milles.

The remembrance section: The visit continues with the remembrance area, which includes the internment quarters of what had been a tile-making factory and the makeshift cabaret as described in Feuchtwanger’s memoir. Some of the artwork created by interned artists remains visible on the walls. In this section, the guide points out the windows from which women were willing to jump rather than suffer deportation and also indicates the places where some fortunate individuals managed to hide and survive.

The reflexive section: Based on a scientific analysis of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the Tutsi genocide, this this third section provides an understanding of the mechanisms that can lead a democracy (both the system and the gathering of individuals within that system) towards a genocide and the capacity of individuals to resist. It also explores the human behavior mechanisms operating through racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.

The Wall of Righteous Acts concludes the visit to the Camp des Milles by showing the many different ways ordinary people can carry out acts of resistance in the context of genocide through examples of the past century.

Today young people remain an important target group for the memorial-site. Alain Chouraqui, president of The Milles Camp Foundation, has written that it is “not for the visitors, especially the young, to leave overwhelmed by the darkness of the persecutions, but rather that they become aware of vigilance and resistance.”

Practical information

Camp des Milles, 40 chemin de la Badesse, 13517 Aix-en-Provence. Tel. 04 42 39 17 11. Open 10am-7pm (no tickets sold after 6pm) daily except Jan. 1, May 1, Dec. 24, 25, 31. The memorial-site suggests counting on 2½ hours for a complete visit. Audio guides are available in English. For information about guided tours in English contact the camp directly. It can be cold in the internment quarters in winter – dress warmly.

The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 by Lion Feuchtwanger can be downloaded free of charge from the USC Libraries website. Further information about the writer and his life as an émigré in the United States can be found here.

Aix-en-Provence Tourist Office, 300 avenue Giuseppe Verdi, 13100 Aix-en-Provence.

Bus service (line 4) from the Rotonde near the Aix-en-Provence Tourist Office goes to the camp, whose station is called Gare des Milles.

© 2017

Wendy Dubreuil is a conference interpreter with a deep interest in human rights and discrimination issues.

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France Revisited’s Market Day in France series provides travelers with lists of appellations, geographic indicators and other labels that reveal the association of food and that is at the heart of market-based gastronomy in a given region.

The list below concerns France’s southeastern region, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA). PACA covers Provence, the Riviera and southern half of the French Alps and pre-Alps. That’s more or less bordered by the Rhone River from Orange to Camargue to the west and by the Italian border from Menton to Briançon to the east.

The three major government labels for agricultural products used in France that ensure provenance and standards relative to specific products are AOP (Protected Designation of Origin), AOC (Controlled Appellation of Origin) and IGP (Protected Geographical Indication). Label Rouge (Red Label) is not necessarily associated with place but rather or general quality relative to similar products.

A brief description of these labels designates is given below this list. A fuller explanation can be found in the preface to this series, Market Day in France: Geography, Appellations and Terroir.

AOP, AOC, IGP and Label Rouge in Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d’Azur, including several that are currently under consideration by INAO, the governmental body that regulates French agricultural labels.

Links are provided for more information about specific products.

FRUITS and VEGETABLES

Citron de Menton, IGP
A large lemon grown on terraced orchards on the hills rising from the corner of the Riviera near the Italian border, in and around the towns of Castellar, Gorbio, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, Saint-Agnès and Menton. (See photo at the top of the page.) Menton holds an annual Lemon Festival, during Mardi Gras season.

Figues de Solliès, AOC and AOP
Figs grown in the Gapeau Valley, just inland between Toulon and Hyères, ripe between mid-August and mid-November.

Melon de Cavaillon, currently under consideration for IGP
A type of cantaloupe, the charentais. See this article on France Revisited.

Muscat du Ventoux, AOC and AOP
A deep blue-black table grape from the center of Provence in markets from the end of August to December.

Cerises des Coteaux du Ventoux, currently under consideration for IGP
Cherries from the center of Provence

Pomme des Alpes de Haute Durance, IGP
Golden delicious and gala apples and related varieties grown on the southwestern edge of the Alps.

OLIVES and OLIVE OIL

Huile d’olive de Nice, AOC and AOP
Olive oil

Huile d’olive de Haute Provence, AOC and AOP
Olive oil

Huile d’olive de Provence, AOC
Olive oil

Huile d’olive d’Aix-en-Provence, AOC and AOP
Olive oil

Huile d’olive de la Vallée des Baux-de-Provence, AOC and AOP
Olive oil

Olive Noire de Nyons, AOC and AOP
Black olives. While the town of Nyons is located in Drome, which is part of the region just north of that covered in this list, a portion of the growing zone for this appellation is located in Vaucluse, which is in Provence.

Huile d’olive de Nyons, AOC and AOP
Olive oil. See note above regarding Nyons.

Olive noire and Olive verte cassée de la Vallée des Baux-de-Provence, AOC and AOP
Black olives and broken green olives.

HERBS

Herbes de Provence, Label Rouge
Rosemary, oregano, savory and thyme

Thym de Provence, currently under consideration for IGP
Thyme

RED MEAT

Taureau de Camargue, AOC and AOP
Wide ranging bulls (two breeds) from the Camargue.

Agneau de Sisteron, IGP and Label Rouge
Lamb from Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Drôme Provençale.

Agneau de Crau (currently under consideration for IGP
Lamb

CHEESE

Brousse du Rove, currently under consideration for AOC
Cheese made from raw goat milk near Marseille and Aix-en-Provence

Banon, AOC and AOP
Cheese made from raw goat milk and wrapped in a chestnut leaf. The appellation zone covers portions of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Hautes-Alpes, Vaucluse and Drôme.

WINE, lots of it

Wine is undoubtedly the product that travelers most associated with appellations since French wines, whether blends or nots, are historically designated by provenance rather than grape.

8 AOC – AOP in Provence
Bandol,  Cassis, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, Coteaux Varois en Provence, Côtes de Provence, Les Baux de Provence, Palette, Pierrevert.

11 AOC – AOP in the southern portion of the Rhone Valley
Beaumes-de-Venise, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Côtes du Rhône, Côtes du Rhône Villages, Gigondas, Luberon, Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, Rasteau, Saint-Joseph, Vacqueyras, Ventoux.

8 IGP in the region
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Alpilles, Bouches-du-Rhone, Hautes-Alpes, Maures, Méditerranée, Sable de Camargue, Var, Vaucluse.

GRAIN

Petit Épeautre de Haute Provence, IGP
Spelt (a type of wheat) from upper-eastern Provence

Riz de Camargue, IGP
Rice from the Camargue

HONEY

Miel de Provence, IGP
Honey from Provence. Honey gathered in Provence may also bear deemed Label Rouge.

CANDY

Calissons d’Aix-en-Provence, currently under consideration for IGP
A candy made from ground almonds and candied fruit topped with a thin icing, said to have been made in the area since the 15th century.

DEFINITIONS

The three major labels used France that ensure provenance and standards relative to a agricultural products are AOP (Protected Designation of Origin), AOC (Controlled Appellation of Origin) and IGP (Protected Geographical Indication).

These labels are essentially based on the notion of terroir, loosely translated as soil or simply place, signifying that the quality of certain products is intimately related to the interplay between their geographic zone of production (related to the zone’s geology, climate, agriculture and history) and the conditions and know-how involved in their production. The name of the place in a given appellation does not mean that the product comes only from within the limits of that town or village. The product can also come from wider geography, depending on the specs associated with that specific appellation.

AOP (Appellation d’origine protégée), or PDO (Protected Designation of Origin), is a protection given to a product within the European Union that designates a product whose geographic zone (geology, climate, agriculture and history) and principal production follow a well-established technique.

AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée or Controlled Appellation of Origin) is the French equivalent of the AOP. It is an older label.

IGP (Indication géographique protégée), or PGI (Protected Geographical Indication), identifies an agricultural product, raw or processed, including wine, whose quality, reputation or other characteristics are linked to its geographical origin.

Two other labels that our traveler will encounter are LR and AB.

Label Rouge (LR) or Red Label is a national sign given to products which, due to their terms of production or manufacture, have a higher level of quality compared to other similar products usually marketed. It isn’t in itself necessarily related to geography but rather to defined specifications for the type of product. Nevertheless, that product may in fact be related to a specific geographical zone.

The label AB, indicating organic farming (agriculture biologique), is not an indicator a specific geographic zone. Organic farming can, however, be involved in producing a product that bears one of the labels or appellations previously described. In that case the product can bear both a geographic appellation/indication and the AB label.

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

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As the daylight dims and the cool air blows, travelers in France from late November to early January—and beyond in some areas—will find a bright and warm mix of regional, national, commercial and religious traditions throughout the holiday season.

Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day, is the privileged family time in France for presents and an abundant dinner, followed for some (relatively few) by midnight mass in some of the country’s magnificent medieval churches and cathedrals. There are then generally leftovers of fine food and drink and, hopefully, family spirit, too, to enjoy on December 25th.

Let’s take a tour of the Christmas season in France through Alsace, Champagne, Lille, Lyon, Provence, Nice and Paris.

(The dates in this article are for the holiday markets and events of 2014 however these are all annual happenings that take place about the same time, give or take a day or two.)

Alsace

One of the most recognizable features of the Christmas season is the Christmas market, rows of chalets (wooden or make-shift shopping huts) set up as early as mid-November in public squares and along major streets to sell folklore, craftsmanship, much food and drink, and Christmas or gift knick-knacks of all kinds.

The tradition of Christmas markets likely originated along the Rhine, leading Strasbourg, which dates the origin of its market to 1570, to call itself “Capital of Christmas.” While otherwise known as capital of Alsace and seat of the European Parliament, Strasbourg pulls out all the stops when it comes to the holiday season.

The most animated of Strasbourg’s Christmas markets surrounds its Notre-Dame Cathedral, whose tremendous steeple dominates the cityscape.

Head due south from Strasbourg and you enter Alsace’s wine route whose bare vines contrast in December with the cheery main streets of picturesque villages, such as Riquewihr and Kaysersberg, that ward off the frost with the warmth of Christmas decorations, mulled wine, gingerbread, small biscuits called bredele and a Bundt-type cake called kouglhof (spelling varies).

Eventually one reaches Colmar, another hotspot for Christmas markets, and beyond that Mulhouse. Mulhouse, a major player in the European textile industry from the mid-18th to the early 20th centuries, produces each year a new Christmas fabric (this year an adaptation of a late-19th-century motif) that decorates the city and is translated into various derivative products.

For more specifics visit the official tourist information sites of Alsace, Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse.

Champagne

Champagne may call to mind the celebration of New Year’s Eve more than Christmas, but Reims, the largest city in the region and home to some of the world’s most elegant champagne houses (i.e. producers) also unfurls an extensive Christmas market along Place Douet d’Erlon, center-city’s main pedestrian drag, and neighboring streets.

The official tourist information site of the city of Reims is found here.

Lille

Lille isn’t quite the North Pole but it’s about as close as one gets while still in France. Never one to miss out on a good party (accompanied by beer rather than wine), Lille gets into the seasonal spirit at its two central square: Place Rihour, which is transformed into an 80-chalet village from Nov. 19 to Dec. 30, and Grand’Place , where a 59-foot pine stands along with a Ferris wheel offering a view over the city. The market fills the square from Nov. 19 to Dec. 30. See Lille’s official Christmas market site here.

Lyon

Lyon’s dazzling Festival of Lights (Fête des Lumières) isn’t directly related to Christmas but nothing announces the winter holiday season better than long nights brightly lit. From December 5 to 8, France’s third largest city is lit by more than 70 different major creative light installations, a brilliant event that draws the oohs and ahhs of 4 million visitors.

For more about Lyon’s Festival of Lights see here.

Provence

North Americans sometimes have trouble associating Christmas with warmer climes since our own Christmas decorative and culinary traditions are rather Alsatian-Germanic in nature. But the nativity story takes place in a bald Mediterranean landscape whose white stone hills have more in common with Provence. In fact, some of world’s must ancient Christian traditions developed in Provence.

While Americans fully enter the Christmas season the day after Thanksgiving, Provence tradition would have it last from the Feast Day of Saint Barbara (Sainte Barb) on Dec. 4 to Candlemas (Chandeleur) on Feb. 2. According to legend, if one plants a plate of wheat at home on Dec. 4 and if by Dec: 25 it grows to a healthy green tuft then abundance will follow in the next harvest. As to Feb. 2, a date Americans are more likely to think of this as Groundhog Day, that’s Candlemas on the Catholic calendar, commemorating the purification of Mary after childbirth and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. That’s the date when crèches are taken down.

Where better to consider Christmas in Provence than in Avignon, the town that the Catholic Popes called home during through most of the 14th century, when they temporarily abandoned squabble-ridden Rome. One of southern France’s most expansive Christmas markets takes place (this year Nov. 30-Jan. 4) on Avignon’s main square, Place de l’Horloge, around the corner from the Popes’ Palace, the town’s major tourist attraction. Among the many manger scenes set up around town, one of the most outstanding typically occupies a portion of the lobby in City Hill, which is also on Place de l’Horloge.

Beginning about the third week in November, crèches begin to be set up in villages and cities throughout the region. And in those crèches you’ll find dozens of figurines called santons. Santon comes from the Provencal word santou, meaning little saint, though few of these figures are now sainted. Santons of the holy family are naturally central to the crèche, but the vast majority of them represent characters of folklore and everyday life in the ideal, traditional Provencal village. While traditionally made of clay and hand painted, other materials such cardboard, cork, or even paper are used by some santonniers, as their creators are known. These cute, naïve and/or humorous figures are typically thumb-size, so taking a dozen home in your suitcase is no problem. Doll-size and baby-thumb-size santons also exist.

Santons are so anchored in Provence that shops sell them year-round, but to buy them in the Christmas spirit the best place may well be Marseille, where they’re said to have originated. Since 1803 Marseille has its Foire aux Santons, an annual traditional nativity fair where santons and other crèche features can be bought. This year’s fair will be held Nov. 15 to Dec. 31. Aix-en-Provence has had its own santon fair since 1934 (this season Nov. 20-Dec. 31), Arles has been celebrating all things crèche since 1958 (this season Nov. 15 to Jan. 12) and the small town of Carpentras also has a nice market for these precious figurines.

In Avignon as well as in other crèche-proud towns of France, one can follow a special route (le Chemin des crèches) to discover different animated and illuminated nativity scenes. Other regions also have crèche-routes outlined though villages, so don’t hesitate to inquire about crèche routes wherever you may travel during the holiday season. Whether travelers partake in it or not, they’re certain to hear along the way about the Provencal tradition of the 13 desserts of Christmas, which ends the Christmas Eve meal known the big supper (le gros souper). The desserts, numbering 13 in honor of Jesus and the 12 Apostles, consist of dried fruit and nuts, fresh fruit and sweets.

For further details about the above-mentioned towns and cities see the official tourist information sites of Avignon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles and Carpentras.

Nice

Though the Riviera holds back on its winter exuberance until the February Carnival/Mardi Gras season, Nice hosts the largest Christmas village of the coast west of Marseille. From Dec. 6 to Jan. 4, Place Massena is given over to 60 chalets, a skating rink and lights galore, while concerts and other events are held on Place Garibaldi on weekend and school holidays. See here for official tourist information about Nice.

Paris

There’s no sweeter place to hunt for Christmas pastries than Paris, where you’ll find some of the best traditional and creative yule logs or buches de Noël, feasts for the eyes as well as for the mouth. The yule log is a log-shaped cake traditionally made of sponge-type cake and chocolate buttercream and then more cream. They can be found throughout France, but their greatest expression graces the fine pastry shops and tea rooms of Paris, where now anything goes as long as it’s got the general shape of a log and a gazillion calories. Though most come in family-size versions, the solitary or coupled traveler will find single or double portions as well.

As a whole, Paris doesn’t display the same seasonal fervor as, say, New York, but its major department stores take to the holiday spirit as eagerly as anywhere. This is particularly the case at the department stores Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, behind the Garnier Opera on Boulevard Haussmann, where families and shoppers (or gawkers) of all ages come to admire the year’s display of lights and window dressings.

The City of Light itself has Christmas markets at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées near Place de la Corcorde (Nov. 15-Jan. 5), at the Montparnasse Train Station (Dec. 4-31), Trocadéro, outside Saint-Sulpice Church (Dec. 1-24) and Saint-Germain-des-Prés Church (Dec. 6-Jan. 2) and in Montmartre (Dec. 5-Jan. 4), as well as the town of Versailles (Dec. 5-26) and other near suburbs. The English version of the official Paris information site is found here.

Bonnes fêtes de fin d’année!

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

A slightly different version of this article also appears in the Nov.-Dec. 2014 issue of Travelworld International magazine

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* * *

No casual tourist would describe Aix-en-Provence as a hotbed of the architectural avant-garde. From the terrace of Café des Deux Garçons, the Aix skyline looks just about like it did back when Paul Cézanne sipped his tisane with Emile Zola.

And yet the ultra-modern Sextius Mirabeau quarter, a showcase for Rudy Ricciotti, Kengo Kuma and some of the hottest 21st century design on the planet, is only a few blocks away. As one sips one’s pastis and looks around at the tawny-tinted 17th-18th century façades, the only question is “Where?”

Closer than you think

Like most 2000-year-old towns, Aix-en-Provence faced a severe space crunch in the mid-20th century. The population had exploded (from 30,000 in 1945 to 100,000 in 1975) and its summertime Lyric Festival, which started small and provincial in 1948, had gone global.

But unlike most 2000-year-old towns, Aix had a magic mushroom: 46 acres of friche—abandoned and under-used industrial land—that started right where the tree-lined Cours Mirabeau ended. City planners had coveted this terrain since the 1950s but given the multiple ownership couldn’t gain title to it.

Eventually, sorely-needed housing projects simply hop-scotched over the zone to new settlements west of the city, such as Jas de Bouffan, where the Fondation Vasarely broke ground in 1976. This left a void that started just west of the 19th-century Rotonde Fountain.

That’s not to say that nothing happened in this sector in the late 20th century. The Marseille autoroute bull-dozed through in the 60s, and a defunct match factory morphed into the Cité des Livres library complex in 1986. But the area wasn’t cleared for construction until negotiations were finalized over land held by the French railway company SNCF and the 1989 sale of the Thompson factory.

All these delays produced some happy results. The nastier brut abuse of the Pompidou era of the 1970s passed Aix by, and city planners had enough time to note that public opinion was against skyscrapers. Although the first set of plans had to be scrapped due the 1980s financial crisis, what emerged is all the more impressive.

Touring the new Aix

Head for the Napoleon III-era Fontaine de la Rotonde at the end of the Cours Mirabeau. It’s topped with three goddesses representing commerce, justice and the arts. One of those ladies, probably Miss Business, is staring hard at the brand-new, glass-walled Apple boutique that popped up last month. The gateway to New Aix is Les Allées Provençales, a series of sleek shopping and housing corridors (ca 2007) leading right across from Apple and the brand-new Tourist Office. Between Les Allees Provençales and the Grand Théâtre, you cross the Esplanade des Justes, inaugurated in March 2014.

The high architectural drama starts a few meters west at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, designed by Milan-based architect Vittorio Gregotti and inaugurated in 2007.

The choice of Gregotti as one the spirit guides for this new district is significant in itself. Gregotti is considered an anti-modernist of the Jane Jacobs/Robert Venturi ilk, believing that new architecture should harmonize with the existing urban context rather than make a stand-alone “statement” (e.g. Paris’s Tour Montparnasse).

Thus the curved, amphitheater-like entrance to the 1,366-seat building appears to nestle into its site, its stones carefully chosen to mimic the changing colors of Mont Sainte-Victoire. (Fact: The proximity of train tracks meant that the whole structure had to be mounted on springs.)

The rear of the theater, more linear but just as attractive, is visible from a high parvis (built above transit) that is home to two other 21st-century bijoux: the Centre Choréographique National d’Aix-en-Provence, nicknamed the Pavillon Noir, designed by Rudy Ricciotti (2006), and the comparatively virginal-looking, all-white Conservatoire Darius Milhaud (2013), signed Kengo Kuma.

Ricciotti, designer of Marseille’s drop-dead gorgeous MuCEM Museum (2013), used an angular, black concrete grid over sheets of glass for an effect that he has described as ”sado-maso” for the Aix Ballet’s home-base. It’s perfectly in line with the edgy work of Angelin Preljocaj, director of the Aix Ballet, famously quoted as saying “La création se fait dans le noir” (Creation takes place in the dark).

Next door, the angels (literally) sing in the Music Conservatory that Tokyo/Paris-based Kengo Kuma coated with shimmery, silver-white anodized aluminum that has been folded, origami-style, to create asymmetric zones of light and shadow. The concert hall, seating 500, is fashioned with wood-paneling in a similar origami treatment.

And below all this?

Remember the autoroute that was paved through the center of the neighborhood in the 1960s? Efforts have been made to beautify it as well. On one side on the tunnel, drivers see a vegetal wall developed by landscape artist Patrick Blanc in 2008. (Parisians know his work from vertical gardens at the Pershing Hall Hotel, the Quai Branly Museum and the BHV Homme store, among other places.) On the other side, yet to be completed, there will be a “water wall” (mur d’eau) commemorating Aix’s natural springs, designed by Christian Ghion.

Where to stay in the Sextius Mirabeau neighborhood?

This is a no-brainer. The glamorous, 5-star Mariott Renaissance opened right across from the Conservatory Darius Milhaud (Pavillon Blanc) in Feb 2014. Marseille architects Claude Sabon Nadjari and Rémy Saada drew up the plans which include a spa, a pool, and a gourmet Provençal restaurant that poached Aix’s top chef, Jean-Marc Banzo, from Le Clos de la Violette. The gastronomic restaurant (closed Sunday and Monday) serves dishes like grilled red mullet with zucchini spaghetti, calamars in squid ink and a reduced bouillabaisse sauce on its 90 € and 130 € prix fixe menus. (There’s also a bistro, open daily serving a 25 € lunch and a 39 € dinner.)

Christian Ghion designed the sleek furniture for the 133 guestrooms that are long on creature comforts: king-size beds, rain showers, AC, coffee/tea service, WiFi and iPod music chargers.

Even in a luxury hotel, however, you won’t get away from the fact that Aix, with 40,000 students, is youth-oriented. (There’s Gatorade right next to the Rémy Martin in the mini-bar.) To fit in better, book yourself a “face-modelling massage” at the spa or go directly to the bar and order the Renaissance cocktail (orange vodka, amaretto, lemon juice, ginger and sesame oil) and test its Phoenix effect.

Note that from many rooms like N° 18, you’ll have a great view of the Water Wall, which, when finished, will be the largest of its kind in Europe.

Marriott Renaissance Aix-en-Provence. 320 avenue Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 13100 Aix-en-Provence. Tel: 04.86.91.54.50.

Exterior Aix

Modern art doesn’t stop at the city limits. Forgo the all-too-familiar Cézanne route and check out the Fondation Vasarely, an Op Art palazzo presided over by Pierre Vasarely, grandson of the artist Victor Vasarely. It’s rare to be able to see this artist’s illusionistic work on a large scale… and ‘large’ for Vasarely was as tall as a two-story building. It’s a hike out of town, but the N° 2 bus takes you up to the doorstep.

Fondation Vasarely. Jas de Bouffan, 13690 Aix-en-Provence. Tel: 04 42 20 01 09. Closed Monday. Through September 2014, the museum showcases the work of Venezuelan op-artist Carlos Cruz-Diez.

Count on a half-hour drive due north to the Château La Coste and get an early start because it’s worth a day-long visit. Irish businessman/bio-dynamic wine entrepreneur Patrick McKillen has spiked his vineyards with works by a Who’s Who of contemporary artists.

Tadao Ando created the striking entry, Jean Nouvel designed the wine production area, and the surprises on the grounds include a Louise Bourgeois spider, a Calder stabile, a Frank Gehry music pavilion “rescued” from its Serpentine sojourn in London, Liam Gillick screens, a Druid-like subterranean vault by Andy Goldsworthy and Michael Stipe foxes… and that’s not all.

It takes at least three to four hours to see all the installations… and new ones are being built all the time. (Kengo Kuma, Ai Weiwei, Carsten Holler and Renzo Piano are on the coming attractions list.) Eventually, the owner plans to create a hotel.

In the meantime, there’s wine to drink and food to eat in two different restaurants. One—slightly more formal, overlooking a Hiroshi Sugimoto sculpture in a reflecting pool—serves quinoa tabbouleh and foie gras. The second—set in a village-like townscape which is actually where La Coste vineyard workers live—serves gazpacho and salads. Open daily. Call ahead for information about wine tastings and special evening events.

Château La Coste. 2750 Route de la Cride, 13610 Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade. Tel: 04 42 61 92 90.

© 2014, Corinne LaBalme

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