A Food Lover’s Guide to France’s Gastronomic Valley

For a style of Marseille, and how its culinary heritage is formed by the ocean, there are few locations like Le Petit Nice Passedat. Because it opened on the water’s edge in 1917, the restaurant has served refined variations of bouillabaisse and different native specialties. However within the palms of Gérald Passedat, the present chef and grandson of the unique founder, it has taken seafood to new gastronomic heights—and earned its third Michelin star in 2008.

After I arrived for lunch on a sunny autumn day, I used to be struck by the setting: an all-white eating room constructed over the rocky shoreline, with a curved wall of glass that offers the place the texture of a luxurious liner crusing on the Mediterranean. After taking my seat by the window, I ordered the eight-course “Passedat” tasting menu.

Every dish advised a narrative. The amuse-bouche had a seafood broth that was as blue because the cerulean waters outdoors. The chef’s signature dish was steamed sea bass topped with ribbons of zucchini and cucumber, served over a flavorful base of untamed fennel, tomatoes, lemon, and a contact of truffle. Passedat named the dish after his grandmother Lucie, who was raised in Quercy, a area recognized for its farming and truffle searching. 

“It’s a few lifestyle that goes again to the area’s roots and embraces native merchandise,” Passedat advised me on the finish of the lunch service. He added that he sources 70 forms of seafood for his menus, together with monkfish, scorpion fish, and lobster caught off Marseille’s rugged coast. “I’ve labored with the native fishermen for a few years.” 

All this may occasionally clarify why his restaurant is highlighted by the Vallée de la Gastronomie, or the Valley of Gastronomy, a food-and-wine path created in 2022 to advertise the storied culinary heritage of three regions of France. The 385-mile path traces a thousand-year-old commerce route between Marseille and Dijon that passes by Lyon, arguably the capital of French gastronomy. Foodies and wine lovers can select their very own journey, with some 500 stops to choose from, together with eating places, wineries, inns, farms, markets, bakeries, chocolatiers, creameries, museums, castles—even a snail breeder. The path celebrates family-run companies and small-batch artisans that guests won’t in any other case encounter. 

With solely three days to spare, I centered on the decrease half of the path. I started my gastronomic highway journey in Marseille, the place I wandered by slender streets till I reached the Previous Port, the town’s historic coronary heart. Boats swayed mast-to-mast and fishermen offered their catch within the fish market. The motion largely takes place round 8 a.m., when the market opens; I arrived later within the morning, however regardless of the hour, crates piled excessive with sardines, purple mullet, and sole nonetheless lined the stone-paved waterfront, a couple of ft from the place the fishermen had moored their vessels. 

The next day, I drove north for an hour, on winding roads flanked by yellow fields of late-fall grapevines, till I arrived at Château La Coste, simply outdoors Aix-en-Provence. The five hundred-acre property features a sculpture park, an artwork gallery, an natural vineyard, and an opulent 28-suite resort, Villa La Coste. 

I had gone there to have lunch at Hélène Darroze à Villa La Coste, one in every of six eating places on the property. Housed in a glass pavilion, the area overlooks fields of natural vineyards, olive groves, and patches of woodland interspersed with installations by art-world heavyweights comparable to Louise Bourgeois, Frank Gehry, and Yoko Ono.

Darroze, a French chef who additionally runs Michelin-starred eating places in Paris and London, had crafted a menu wherein the area’s greens have been solid in starring roles. I ordered a six-course menu, “A Stroll into the Gardens of Provence,” that included a mousseline of carrots topped with carrot crisps, served with tandoori-spiced shrimp in a cubeb-pepper sauce. One other dish featured a medley of tomatoes from the château’s backyard—as a jelly and a compote, in addition to candied, dried, and sliced uncooked—alongside a goat-milk cheese garnished with fish roe from Martigues, a city close to Marseille. 

After lunch I drove north previous the Luberon mountains to Domaine de Montine, a family-run wine property close to the medieval village of Grignan. The property has a truffle orchard and a farmhouse resort, the place I spent a restful evening after sampling a few of its wines with native cheeses. Within the morning, I visited a century-old truffle market in close by Richerenches. Held each Saturday between November and March, it’s cut up into two sections: a public space that takes over the principle road, and a wholesale-only space on a aspect road. 

I used to be accompanied by Jean-Luc and Rémi Monteillet, whose household personal Domaine de Montine. They gave me a glimpse into the secretive world of “black gold” buying and selling, stating negotiations going down out of automobile trunks. Earlier than leaving the market, we stopped at a meals truck. I ordered a corn velouté soup, which was hearty, heat, and perfumed with truffles.

Again on the property, Rémi and I went truffle searching with Sydney, a boisterous Australian shepherd that bounded forward of us, sniffing below neat rows of oak timber. At any time when she frantically began to dig, we caught up along with her and thoroughly unearthed the dear mushroom utilizing a small hoe. We stopped after she discovered 4 walnut-size items. No one might come right here with out tasting the property’s truffles, so I had a decadent lunch of chestnut soup and cheese ravioli, each topped with truffle shavings, which I savored on the resort’s sunny terrace. 

My last cease took me one other hour north to Domaine Michelas St. Jemms, a small however prestigious wine property in Mercurol-Veaunes, a commune within the northern Rhône Valley. After I arrived, a tasting led by Sébastien Michelas, who runs the vineyard along with his three sisters, was below approach within the cavernous cellar. Michelas moved from barrel to barrel, drawing wine and passionately describing the tactic and terroir at every cease.

His enthusiasm was infectious, his tales evoking the rugged hills, the generations of winemakers, the soil itself. Standing amid stacks of dusty bottles and growing older barrels, I savored the Viognier and the Syrah. Their complicated layers lingered on my palate, a last tribute to the various flavors of Provence and the Rhône. 

Plan Your Personal Culinary Journey

The Vallée de la Gastronomie lets meals lovers plot their very own culinary journey between Marseille and Dijon. Listed below are 4 extra of our picks. 

Escargot des Restanques: Be taught all about heliciculture, or snail breeding, at this family-run farm in St. Remèze. Jars of Burgundy snails are prepared for buy. 

Ferme du Brégalon: This small goat farm in Rognes grows its personal animal feed and makes cheeses utilizing conventional strategies.

Les Ateliers Weiss: Craft your personal sweet bars and nibble to your coronary heart’s content material at this venerable chocolate manufacturing facility, based in 1882 in St.-Étienne.

Moulin Saint Michel: This historic mill in Mouriès has been making olive oil the identical approach since 1744. It additionally sells tapenade, jams, and different native merchandise.

A model of this story first appeared within the December 2024 situation of Journey + Leisure below the headline “Of Land​ and Sea.”