Les Akolytes has the best damn seat in the house of Marseille. Akolytes’ long shaded tables, which seat over thirty people family style, is found directly across from the entry to Plage de Catalan – the first urban beach encountered when walking up from the Vieux Port. Marseille has quite a number of sea-view restaurants, but none compare to this location’s proximity to the sea and its heady brine and breeze and to its front row seats to Marseille’s beach pageant just across the street. Particularly at Catalan, every kind of human being, every look, color, origin, and age, makes their way by velo, scooter, laughing, walking, talking, crossing over, to wade into the waters glimmering before those sitting at Akolytes’ tables.
Despite what would appear like a tourist-friendly location, most of the year the restaurant’s clientele is made up of locals from the neighborhood. The menu leans Mediterranean, adding recognizably Marseillais, Asian, and Middle Eastern dishes revisités, transformed. We order a portion of savory bouillabaisse, served in its own little saucepan, with a slice of the traditional grilled bread topped with rouille (a mayonnaise made of olive oil, garlic, saffron, and cayenne pepper), and a surprise poached egg added to the soupe de roche, rock fish soup. We could consider this a cheeky move, considering Restaurant Michel, well-known for this Marseille winter classic, is just next door. So Les Akolytes serves this unique mini-bouillabaisse, offering customers a taste without having to face the whole hefty, pricey meal (a bouillabaisse meal elsewhere goes for seventy euros a head now, as it has become the tourist special).
Les Akolytes lists fifteen choices of medium-sized portions, somewhere between entrées and plats, with no sides – making them perfect beach portions to share. Two choices can make a satisfying meal (at 22 euros) or three if one desires more (29 euros). The ceviche is impeccably fresh, beautifully seasoned with chives, pomegranate seeds, sprouts, lemon wedges, pink grapefruit sections, and as colorfully decorated as are the Camargue oysters – so much so that both look painterly, quite fitting in the bright theater of this beachfront. Meat options are available as well, like an enticing burger – not too mini – or a steak with anchovy sauce. Other beautifully presented dishes are a salad of squid and garlicky fava beans or an eggplant “terrine” served in its own skin, topped with thin slices of poutargue (a hard sausage made of dried red mullet eggs, also found in Tunisia, Italy, and Greece). All is simple and fresh, the unexpected combinations enjoyable, and the short wine list is regional, well-selected, and mostly organic and natural.
There are even smaller portions for those just stopping by for a drink. Panisses (rolls of chick-pea flour paste sliced into discs and fried) are listed under kemia, which in Arabic means “an amount” or “portion” – the equivalent of mezze in Levantine dialects. In Marseille, kemia means appetizers, and many do not know the Maghrebi origin of this term. Les Akolytes offers long baton panisses – light, crispy, sprinkled with paprika, and served with a home-made mayo-mustard sauce.
Les Akolytes has a new owner who experienced a coup de coeur, falling for this restaurant at first sight. He plans to make some changes, but not to the menu. Why would he replace such a pleasing, something-for-everyone menu, he asks? He would like to refurbish the inside, adding a piano bar for winter weekend evenings by the sea. And he just hired a new chef he will invite to experiment with the plats de jour. The current cook, Charles, is an aeronautical engineer who was trained by the former chef to produce the menu’s offerings, which he does expertly, but does not feel ready to innovate. (Marseille has an inspiring number of chefs who pursued radically different careers before they decide to open a restaurant and cook their passions.) Head server Melanie is a sight to see, as she holds down forty guests at lunch with her good humor and energy. “C’est mon bébé,” she says of Les Akolytes, and will continue to work here.
It feels quite festive to sit at such a long table at the seaside, in the company of the dozens of other diners. Les Akolytes is a great place to eat solo, as we feel emballés, in good-humored company, and endlessly entertained by all the goings-on. The hop-on-hop-off bus comes by, the tourists look straight at us and wave hello!; a car of young guys in sunglasses and new haircuts pulls up to the table briefly, playing the rapper Jules on the radio; a woman with a glorious afro and round sunglasses rides by on her bike with sacs Tati maghrebins attached – those practical, plaid-patterned bags; two older women cross the street barefoot, in bikinis, with dripping hair, perhaps to buy something at a convenience store; the white boat Algerie Feries, puffing some black smoke in the distance, passes by close enough for us to see tiny passengers filling the decks; a couple with no stroller, carrying three sleeping infants makes their way down the steps to the beach; groups of friends swaying to music, chatting, holding onto one another, also descend to the beach – and this fascinating procession just continues all day and into dinner time at Les Akolytes.
Jenine AbboushiMarion Péhée
Published on October 14, 2022
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