Marseille

Sur le Pouce: Couscous and Comfort Food

The walk to Sur le Pouce, a popular Tunisian family restaurant, is a straight shot from Marseille’s central boulevard, La Canébiere. We make our way along rue Longues des Capucins, behind Alcazar, the main public library, pass the Chinese wholesale clothing stores – Joy Lady, Wei Wei, and New 35 – and arrive ten minutes and several wonderous lands later to the corner of rue de la Convalescence. At the door of Sur le Pouce, we find ourselves in the heart of downtown Marseille and the populaire, working class, Belsunce neighborhood, largely inhabited by people of Maghrebi heritage, both French nationals and recent arrivals.

Marseille

Ekume: Panama meets Provence

Écume is French for sea foam. Modifying one letter, Ekume is also the Saint Victor neighborhood’s new restaurant gastronomique that summons (and is summoned by) the Mediterranean every day. Located near the end of Rue Sainte in Marseille, Ekume’s neighborhood includes a promontory with thrilling views of the waters, boats, coastline and the Vieux Port. The restaurant is also one block away from the 5th-century Saint Victor Abbey, with its evocative beauty and occasional evening concerts. At first glance, Ekume, with its staid and comfortable décor in tan, beige, and slate blue, seems to correspond to the many bougie restaurants cropping up in the 7th and 8th arrondissements in recent years. The experience of dining at Ekume, however, offers the opportunity to contemplate how space itself can transform with imaginative cuisine, accents, personality, and hospitality.

Marseille

Caterine: The Quaint Canteen

Rue Fontange is a narrow street with small, inspired businesses that seem to complement one another. The vitrine of Vinyl is lavishly covered in white-marker script, through which we can still see wine, records, and meals by Oumalala (now serving here); across the street is Gallery Charivari, which when we visited was featuring Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa’s astonishing sculptures from his Compressés series, different takes on a heavy man slouching into a chair; further along lies the fine book selection of Histoire de l’oeil, with its garden and cabanon out back, a small red shed we can also see if we walk straight through Caterine restaurant next door to its dining patio, which feels like a continuum of the same garden.

Marseille

Sassoun: Armenian To Go

Marseille is home to the biggest Armenian community in Europe, with cultural centers, churches, and several neighborhoods with a significant Armenian presence. Most fled the Armenian genocide of 1915-1922, joining a smaller and older Armenian community of merchants that settled in Marseille starting in the mid-nineteenth-century. The different waves of Armenian immigrants and refugees, coming to some 80,000 people, maintain ties to Armenia, family, and culinary traditions, and many eventually thrived. Armenian cuisine is rich and varied, and yet what is available in Marseille’s city center in terms of actual restaurants and takeout doesn’t reflect that. Because Armenian cuisine is a home cuisine, it is often in private houses that we enjoy the traditional dishes like kabab karaz, meatballs in sour cherry sauce, or manti, clusters of small, open raviolis of spiced meat.

Marseille

Nestou: Return to Marseille

Like other young French chefs who receive classical training in their home country, Jeanne and Jean-Phillip Garbin headed abroad to gain some practical experience. The couple, in fact, went all the way to Australia, only to find themselves working brutally long hours and longing for home. The two eventually returned to France, landing in Marseille – Jeanne’s hometown – where for the last two years they have been running Nestou, a cozy spot in the Catalan neighborhood that allows them to cook a small selection of fine French-Mediterranean food and maintain a positive, comfortable atmosphere.

Marseille

Voilà Vé: A Natural Wine Tour de France

Voilà vé is a Marseillais interjection meaning “look here.” Look – and taste, Victor Million-Rousseau and his partner Alix Huguet might add. They are the owners of the Camas neighborhood’s organic wine bar Voilà Vé, which opened its doors just six months before the first Covid-19 lockdown and the ensuing rocketing upsurge in the organic market with new concern for nature and health during the pandemic. The bar has survived the last couple of tumultuous years, sustained by the quality of its selection and its democratic approach to wine-tasting. Following a heatwave and cold beer summer, the splendid autumn weather in this capital of Provence invites new adventures in wine. At Voilà Vé, we can do this without ever leaving Marseille.

Marseille

Golda: Golden Fare on Gambetta Street

Allée Leon Gambetta is a street branching off from Stalingrad Square in Marseille’s Réformés neighborhood, located around the corner from Gare Saint-Charles which, like most train station areas, is a bit rough around the edges. Past the unemployed men working on packs of Heineken in front of the grocery store, regulars lingering at the sandwich joints and cafés, Golda shines like a beacon, her beach-yellow parasols almost airborne over the pavement of this tree-lined street of elegant, worn buildings. Flaunty Golda, newly opened in June 2022, is in fact a relaxed, pretty corner bistro with an ample terrace bordered by leafy plants.

Marseille

Grain de Sable: French Fusion Lunch

Grain de Sable is tucked into Rue de Baignoir, which runs under the skybridge of Marseille’s Alcazar public library, near the Vieux Port. The clientele for this excellent lunch spot is as local as it gets, and comes mainly from the library itself, particularly its 400-staff-member media center. Customers who come to Grain de Sable from farther afield hear about it de bouche à oreille (by word of mouth) and find a way to dart across the city from work to enjoy an organic midday meal. For visitors, this restaurant offers a simple, healthful, and inventive meal as a welcome pause from rich food offered in many Marseille eateries. ,

Marseille

Les Akolytes: Beachfront Life and Lunch

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.

Marseille

Le République: Social Solidarity

Le République may be one of the most beautiful restaurants in Marseille. A historic space that once housed Café Parisen (from 1905, with its boulodrome for games of pétanque on the lower floor), it has been elegantly renovated and was reopened at the beginning of 2022 as a restaurant gastronomique solidaire—a gourmet “solidarity restaurant” and unique community project that embraces both guests and workers. But, without reading about it, diners would never guess this. Instead, they would take a table in the luminous space (1200 square meters!) with minimalist aesthetics, lofty ceilings, cornices, and great, dried flower-and-leaf chandeliers. There, they would discover Michelin-star chef Sébastien Richard and his team’s delightful creations, refined and simple, kindly served. Unknowingly, these guests participate directly in Le République social project.

Marseille

Sur le Pouce: Couscous and Comfort Food

The walk to Sur le Pouce, a popular Tunisian family restaurant, is a straight shot from Marseille’s central boulevard, La Canébiere. We make our way along rue Longues des Capucins, behind Alcazar, the main public library, pass the Chinese wholesale clothing stores – Joy Lady, Wei Wei, and New 35 – and arrive ten minutes and several wonderous lands later to the corner of rue de la Convalescence. At the door of Sur le Pouce, we find ourselves in the heart of downtown Marseille and the populaire, working class, Belsunce neighborhood, largely inhabited by people of Maghrebi heritage, both French nationals and recent arrivals.

Marseille

Regain: Novel Idea

Regain is housed behind the marigold shutter doors of one of Marseille’s trois fenêtres (meaning “three windows,” the city’s typical brownstone). From the street, one can spy the full tables of the shady urban garden far on the other side. It is hard to believe that this Rue Saint-Pierre restaurant opened just six months ago, given its current hot-spot status among Marseille gourmands. From the unusual descriptions of chef Sarah Chougnet-Studel’s creations, it’s hard to imagine what the taste and experience of any dish will be. But Regain’s many repeat diners trust in Sarah’s intriguing French-Asian amalgams: order anything on the menu and it will prove to be both intriguing and delicious.

Marseille

Camas Sutra: Culinary Encounters

The storefront restaurant Camas Sutra (a play on its location in the Camas neighborhood of Marseille) still sports “Boucherie, Charcuterie, Crèmerie” on the original red and yellow banners, left over from just 18 months ago when it was home to a neighborhood butcher. The “no restaurant sign” tactic, occasionally seen these days in hip neighborhoods of Marseille, is a choice to curate client discovery and word-of-mouth marketing. But glancing towards the large window as we pass by on this narrow street off Boulevard Chave, we instantly recognize that it is now a restaurant, with a solo high table outside for apéro, a grand, 17-person wooden table inside, an open kitchen, and the chef and wine server prepping, circulating, and talking wine and food with their guests.

Marseille

Oumalala: Neighborhood Dinner Party

A month ago, I moved into to my new place in Marseille’s La Plaine neighborhood. After the moving truck drove off, leaving me with stacks of boxes and furniture and no food yet in the refrigerator, I ventured out in my dusty jeans to find a place to eat some lunch in the neighborhood. On Rue Saint-Pierre, I passed Oumalala with its homey, hand-written signs offering vegetarian, organic cuisine, and I paused at the door. The olive green, ochre, and turquoise interior, lunchtime-lit candles and small vases of flowers garnishing the tables, the beautiful woman serving food, talking to customers, all pulled me in.