When you board the 1 tram line in boisterous Noailles, the train snakes from a dark, underground tunnel onto the picturesque Boulevard Chave in the Le Camas district. Like the country roads of Provence, the wide street is lined with soaring plane trees. Behind them, 19th century buildings – a mix of typically Marseillais trois fenêtres (three window) and decorative Art Nouveau facades – add to the eye-pleasing promenade so beloved by locals. This scene was similar a century ago. Just a mile as the seagull flies from the Vieux-Port, Le Camas was appealing for its accessibility to the city center by tram. Landowner-turned-developer André Chave founded the neighborhood to accommodate Marseille’s growing middle class.

At a typical pâtisserie orientale, the front window is often stacked with towers of sweets – honey-soaked visual merchandising to entice passersby to pop inside. Some pastry shops line their walls with colorful geometric tiles and Moorish arches, the icing on the Maghreb cake. Pâtisserie Orientale Journo goes for a decidedly more subtle approach. Though located a block from Marseille’s main drag, the Canèbiere, this unassuming shop is somewhat lost in the shuffle of the pedestrian Rue de Pavillon. The few tables scattered out front suggest that there’s food to be found inside but the open storefront is bare – save for a giant five-gallon water jug propped on a stool, with a hand-scrawled sign “citronnade – 2 euros” beside it. That’s all the advertising needed for a pastry shop that has survived by word of mouth for 60 years.

Perched at the northern tip of Marseille, the fishing port of L’Estaque has drawn diverse groups throughout the decades. In the last half of the 19th century, bourgeois Marseillais would tram from the city center to eat bouillabaisse and swim on its shores. When the industrial era launched in 1820, L’Estaque housed workers from the nearby factories where traditional Provençal terra cotta tiles were made. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the diverse landscape and the incredible light lured painters from the north like Braques and Cézanne, who compared the sloping village to a “playing card” with its “red roofs against a blue sea.” But since the 1930s, people have flocked to L’Estaque for another reason: the fried snacks.