Marseille

Le Parpaing qui Flotte: Floating to the Top

A man leans on the zinc bar, reading La Provence with his café. In wanders a helmet-clad father-daughter duo, searching for sirops (a sweet cordial) to cool off after their scoot. She looks hungrily at the platter of cookies on the bar, freshly baked for that afternoon’s snack. Beside them, the bartender peels a fragrant pile of ginger for the evening’s cocktail rush. At all-day café Le Parpaing qui Flotte, there’s good food and drink to be had at any hour. Neighborhood regulars ease into the day with a coffee. The tasty food draws a steady lunch crowd, and at apéro hour, the outdoor terrace fills up for post-work drinks. As night falls, a younger crowd enjoys some of the city’s best cocktails and tapas.

Marseille

Yossi: Kosher Cool

A waiter whisks platters of schnitzel and heaping challah-bun burgers to a large family, their laughter reverberating throughout the long dining room. We watch a pair of men beside us tuck into a Flintstonian-size steak as we try to fit our family-style vegetarian feast onto our small two-top. In spite of its quiet side street locale, Yossi resounds with a dinner party conviviality the moment you step inside. Situated near Marseille’s most prominent synagogue and the Rue Saint-Suffren, aka Rue des Juifs (Road of the Jews), Yossi is a kosher restaurant serving up Israeli comfort food in an industrial chic space that bears all the markers of cosmopolitan cool: exposed pipes, brass light fixtures and an open kitchen decked out in subway tiles.

Marseille

Ashourya: A Safe Harbor for Syrian Home Cooking

In Total Kheops, the first book in his iconic Mediterranean noir trilogy, Jean-Claude Izzo writes how Marseille is “a place where no matter who, and no matter what color, can descend from a boat, or a train, his suitcase in hand, without a cent in his pocket, and assimilate in the sea of other men...” Crossroads city, transit city, refugee city, promised land. For over 2,600 years – Marseille has the longest-operating port of any coastal Mediterranean city according to AGAM (the city’s Department of Urban Planning) – immigrants have disembarked in the harbor here, creating a cosmopolitan culture that is unique in France.

Marseille

Zoumaï: Marseille-Born Brews

Though France shares a border with Belgium and sits across the English Channel from the UK, the country doesn’t have as big a beer culture as its neighbors. The French consume less than half of the European average of seventy liters per person. The trends have been shifting over the past few years, however, spurned by the deluge of microbrews in the United States and elsewhere. From 246 microbrasseries in 2016, France now has a whopping 1653 since the start of 2020. Marseille’s first microbrasserie, La Plaine, set sail in 2013 (the industrial La Cagole – whose bottles sport the city’s clichéd bimbo – doesn’t count). La Minotte followed in 2015. Then, in April 2018, we got our first bona fide brewpub: Zoumaï.

Marseille

Sissi La Citronnade Artisanale: When Life Gives You Lemons

With the heat wave pushing the thermometer past the 90s, Marseillais are hitting the city’s beaches and cafés, where they cool off with limonade (sparkling lemonade), citron pressé (a glass of fresh-squeezed lemon in which you add water to your liking) or citronnade. The latter is lemonade in French, but in Marseille, it often means the bracing, whole-lemon beverage sipped across the Maghreb. Normally, we go to Chez Yassine for our citronnade. When the snack bar was closed for Eid al-Adha (the “Festival of Sacrifice,” one of Islam’s two main festivals), we ended up at Saf-Saf, another Tunisian spot down the street. It was listed on the menu as fait maison (homemade) citronnade, so we were surprised when the waiter brought over a sleek bottle.

Marseille

Exosud: Levantine Larder

Sandwiched between Cours Julien and La Plaine, Rue Saint-Michel is stuffed with a smorgasbord of epicurean shops. Each window display is an edible advertisement: wheels of cheese at Art de la Fromagerie and mushroom-stuffed raviolis at Pâtes Fraiches et Raviolis Cédric Bianco tempting passersby behind the glass. The signless number 26 is more nondescript. From across the street, the mural of handymen above the storefront makes it seem like a hardware store. The jars of pickled vegetables beside the door say otherwise. Go inside, and you’ll find one of Marseille’s best épiceries.

Marseille

La Pergola: Coastal Pleasures

If you ask a Marseillais where to cavort on the coast, most will respond, without hesitation, “the Calanques”: turquoise coves tucked between towering limestone cliffs that can only be reached by foot, boat or paddle. Spanning Marseille and Cassis, this national park gets all the glory – and tourist campaigns – for its jaw-dropping grandeur. But, north of the city, you’ll find more intimate calanques that also merit a visit: the Côte Bleue. Unlike the barely inhabited Calanques National Park, the “Blue Coast” is dotted with fishing villages anchored in blue coves, each one appearing to have been carved into the limestone hills. Some of the secluded ports are connected by hiking trails that weave between beach pines and the Mediterranean.