Toujours Provence (Vintage Departures)

Returning to Paris after a long absence, there is always a temptation to plunge in and taste everything. Call it greed, or the result of deprivation, but food in Paris is so varied, so seductive, and so artfully presented that it seems a shame not to have a dozen of Brittany’s best oysters, some herb-flavored lamb from Sisteron, and two or three ch

“If you permit, we might try with our dessert the closest thing Provence has to one of those Sauternes you Bordelais do so well. A glass of muscat from Beaumes-de-Venise.

Tourism makes an important contribution to the local economy and provides a living for many talented people—several cooks among them—who might otherwise have to look elsewhere to make ends meet. Let’s take, for example, the only two good restaurants Reichl was able to find in the whole of Provence: the Auberge de Noves and the Bistrot du Paradou. B

As I’ve often said, there is nothing a Frenchman likes more than a self-confessed ignoramus, preferably foreign, who can be instructed in the many marvels and curiosities of France. I think it must be part of the national psyche, a compulsion to educate and thus to civilize those who have suffered the misfortune of being born in a less privileged p

L’Auberge de La Môle, we agreed, was the kind of restaurant the French do better than anyone else: highly professional, and yet it felt like the extension of a friend’s kitchen, casual, easy, and comfortable. The restaurants with a row of stars, as good as they are, tend to have a similar veneer, polished, perfect, and international. The Auberge co