In the footsteps of food writer MFK Fisher on Provence culinary trail
The south of France has long been a favourite spot of food writers, including the late Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. Inspired by her book about a 1970 trip, travel writer Tristan Rutherford embarks on a culinary journey
The arrival at Nice airport was something of a ceremony for food writer Julia Child. As she wrote to her fellow cookbook author, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher: “This has become our ritual gear-shift from the USA.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, both writers were at the peak of their powers – the most famous foodie names in the Western world. It was only natural that both gravitated to the planet’s most fabulous culinary corner: the south of France.
Today, Nice airport no longer offers the oysters and sole fillet that Child once enjoyed. But my arrival coincides with the launch of several authentically local pop-up restaurants that dot the terminal. There is Chez Pipo, a purveyor of Niçoise chickpea pancakes known as socca. There’s also La Tarte Tropezienne, a pâtisserie from St Tropez that has been using the same creamy recipe since Child and Fisher last jetted in.
M. F. K Fisher.
That bodes well. Because I’m following the culinary trail set by Fisher, who blazed a decades-long foodie highway from Marseilles to Nice, frequently in the company of other culinary giants including Child, Richard Olney and James Beard. Fisher’s impossibly romantic notes on French cuisine, including Consider the Oyster, still top the Amazon charts.
Moreover, the 2016 opening of La Pitchoune as a cooking school, plus the recent book Provence, 1970 by Fisher’s great-nephew, Luke Barr, has made her route an even more enticing path to follow.
Niçoise chickpea pancakes, known as socca, at Nice airport.
It is Barr’s expertise that I call on first. The American writer stumbled on his great aunt’s Provence diary “completely by accident” in a lock-up garage. As Barr explains: “That fall trip of 1970 was a fateful one, not only for my great-aunt M.F.K. Fisher, but for the entire American food establishment.”
The journal centres around La Pitchoune (lapeetch.com), where potluck dinners of jambon persillé and tarte Tatin would be sourced in the local town of Grasse. The calibre of the dining guests – “they were all there in Provence together: Julia Child, James Beard, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, Judith Jones” – would be like inviting Alain Ducasse, Thomas Keller, Pierre Gagnaire and Nobu Matsuhisa to a bring-your-own brunch.
Richard Olney (left) and Simone Beck in the garden of Olney’s Provencal estate in the early 1970s.
As Fisher’s 1970 diary shows, the group made day trips to the food-obsessed villages of Mougins and St-Paul-de-Vence. Back then, a young Alain Ducasse was commis chef at Le Moulin de Mougins (moulindemougins.com), which reopened in 2016 to serve gastronomic lunches starting at €35. In St-Paul-de-Vence the must-eat place is still La Colombe d’Or (la-colombe-dor.com). It’s a restaurant that displays canvases by Picasso and Matisse, both of whom were encouraged to part with their art in exchange for a tasty Provençal lunch. As Fisher recalled: “I know, at this far date in my life, that I was meant to live and if possible to die on a dry, olive-covered hillside in Provence.”
Luke Barr, Fisher’s great-nephew, published Provence, 1970 in 2013.
Barr also followed his great aunt’s musings to the regional capital of Aix-en-Provence. Here Fisher found private solace by staying in the charmingly traditional Hotel des Quatre Dauphins (lesquatredauphins.fr) and sipping espresso in Café les Deux Garçons. Don’t forget, she was food royalty who wrote for TheNew Yorker and had been photographed by Man Ray. Barr, who stayed and ate in the establishments his great aunt frequented, says “you can still find that timeless Provence today if you look for it”. He claims the spirit is not embodied by named chefs or famous cheeses, “but by home cooking and market pleasures, just like Fisher found during her decades spent touring the south of France”.
The kitchen at La Pitchoune.
My own journey shuttles south through the vineyards of Provence to Marseilles. Fisher frequented France’s second city from the 1920s to the 1970s and captured her musings in the food memoir A Considerable Town: “The place haunts me and draws me, with its phoenixlike vitality and realistic beauty and brutality.”
The city has changed irrevocably since her last visit 40 years ago. The area around Marseille’s Saint-Charles train station was once a den of drugs and prostitution. Now the tang of Vietnamese chilli sauce and the steam of freshly made falafel rise from the vibrant backstreets. The most unctuous couscous in town is served at Restaurant Fémina, and paired with Algerian Chateau Tellagh wine.
James Beard at La Pitchoune in the early 1970s.
The most traditional part of France’s most diverse city is the Vieux Port. Here fishing boats still chug in at 6am to dump their catch of squid, bream and rockfish directly onto the quay. The informal Marché aux Poissons remains Marseilles’ most colourful sight. Fisher had a fine view over proceedings from her regular haunt at the Grand Hotel Beauvau (sofitel.com). Renovated to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2016, it still allows guests to pen their notes on an antique writing desk while overlooking the sea. Local stores include Four des Navettes (fourdesnavettes.com), which bakes local navette biscuits flavoured with orange blossom and lavender. It has used the same cast iron oven since 1781.
The fish market at Marseilles’ Vieux Port.
Yet Marseilles pairs its traditions with out-and-out dynamism. To discover innovative city flavours I hike uphill to the Cours Julien, a no-go area during Fisher’s time. Ego is a new artisanal outfit that carries vat-to-glass biodynamic wines that you can pour yourself. Its 70-plus ice cream flavours are all organic. You can help yourself to those, too – your bucket is then weighed at the counter on electronic scales and priced accordingly. For spellbindingly modern cuisine I hit AM par Alexandre Mazzia (alexandremazzia.com), which won its first Michelin star in 2015. The lunchtime set menu is an Asian-Mediterranean medley of seaweed pan noir, pineapple-grilled oysters and wild salmon sake. At just €€35, it also proves that Marseilles is France’s cheapest culinary entrepôt.
Fisher in California in the late 1970s.
From Marseilles there is only one place left on Fisher’s south of France trail. The city of Arles is a foodie Mecca, where I have thrice eaten the best meal of my food critic existence atMichelin two-star L’Atelier de Jean-Luc Rabanel (rabanel.com). Like Fisher, I check into the Hotel Nord-Pinus (nord-pinus.com). In the winter of 1970, she stayed in the hotel’s Jean Cocteau Suite, where the maid delivered croissants, jam and café au lait for breakfast. Four and a half decades after her visit, the staff don’t recall Fisher. But more recently they hosted fellow American food writer Jim Harrison in the same room. He apparently ate very well.
Interior of L’Atelier de Jean Luc Rabanel in Arles.
According to Fisher’s biographer Barr, Arles represented a crossroads for Fisher. At the age of 62 it would be one of her last visits to the south of France. Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking 2 would be published in 1971. Chez Panisse in California opened the same year. The migration of Provençal cooking into global cuisine became unstoppable. It’s astonishing to think that the movement’s inspiration came from the restaurants, street markets and cafés from Nice to Marseilles. Which makes a present day pilgrimage all the more prescient.
