Lionel Lévy was on the brink of relinquishing his secure and promising position as sous-chef at Alain Ducasse's Spoon Food & Wine in Paris. Excited about his plan to take over an abandoned restaurant space in the Old Port section of Marseille, the young man sought the counsel and blessing of the Master. "To open in Marseille you are crazy," advised Ducasse, expressing paternalistic misgivings. "To open in the Old Port you are even crazier."
This and subsequent friendly warnings from Lévy's fellow "Ducasse boys"—as the superstar chef's protégés are known—reflected the Mediterranean seaport's reputation as a desert where haute cuisine is concerned. So Lévy, a native of Toulouse, may well have felt that his colleagues' scorn merely typified the sort of Parisian arrogance to which the Marseillais are not alone in being subjected. But he was genuinely startled when he heard a similarly scathing assessment of his prospects from Denis Leduc, a loan officer at a bank in Marseille. In evaluating Lévy's credit application, Leduc told him his restaurant wouldn't work—the Marseillais didn't know how to eat and certainly wouldn't pay the prices Lévy intended to ask.
If, as Lévy firmly believes over two years later, the foremost detractors of France's oldest city are the Marseillais themselves, they may ultimately be its least persuasive ones. Dispelling doubts about the existence of an adequate local appetite for creative, skillfully prepared food, Lévy and his menu, which is a masterpiece of reinvention, are flourishing at the reasonably priced Une Table, au Sud. Together with such talented young chefs as Guillaume Sourrieu, Christian Ernst, Florent Saugeron, and Dominique Frérard, he is forging a new tradition, a new cuisine marseillaise. And native son Gérald Passédat, chef-proprietor of Restaurant Passédat, for years the city's most nationally acclaimed restaurant (it has two Michelin stars), is at last finding an adoring local audience as well.
The Marseillais' inclination to downplay and even disparage what they know and love best betrays a resistance to change and a suspicion of outsiders that dates back to a momentous visit by Julius Caesar in 49 b.c. When the aspiring Roman dictator battled his rival, Pompey the Great, for control of the strategically important seaport, the Marseillais backed Pompey and suffered severely for their miscalculation.
Ever since then, they have been an alternately circumspect and rebellious people who feel isolated from their region—Provence—and their country. A Marseillais's deepest loyalties are reserved for Olympique de Marseille, bouillabaisse, and Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde—respectively, the local soccer team, the celebrated fish stew, and the city's hilltop basilica, whose golden statue of the Virgin Mary, on top of the bell tower, is a landmark for Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike.
The landscape and lifestyle that sustain this insularity can be savored from the panoramic terrace of L'Escale, an informal seafood restaurant perched over the quaint fishing village of Les Goudes, on the southern outskirts of the city. The restaurant commands a fabulous view of the rocky limestone coastline that enticed the Greek mariners from Asia Minor who founded Massilia more than 26 centuries ago. The diners who devour seafood here and lapse into a boisterous conviviality are sharing in a pastime that generations of Marseillais have regarded as a birthright.
"The friends, the pastis, the sun, the boules, the sea, the Trilogie Marseillaise—this is my culture," says owner Serge Zarokian, evoking the distinctive accent and folksy joie de vivre captured by Marcel Pagnol in the classic films—Marius, Fanny, and César—that make up the trilogy. "Our identity must be preserved. If we do like all the other cities, we are finished."
With his gregarious charm and Armenian-Corsican-Italian-Lebanese roots, the 35-year-old Zarokian embodies the timeless flavor of this Mediterranean melting pot—as if by order from central casting. His bourride, the traditional aïoli-charged stew of white-fleshed fish, is a silky, garlicky dream. He is more delighted to show you his seafood before it's cooked rather than afterward. His grilled fish, often seasoned with fresh herbs or wild fennel picked from the surrounding scrubland, is rarely given a chance to dry out, as so often happens on the grill. And of Mediterranean sea bass Zarokian says, "A loup needs no artifice."
For an even tighter focus on purity of tradition, you have to go to the modest-looking Tiboulen de Maïre, where proprietor Aimé Bergero (don't dare call him a restaurateur or, worse still, a chef) offers no main course other than up to ten local varieties of grilled fish. Tomate à la provençale is the single side dish; a wedge of lemon, the lone accompaniment for the fish. Frequent requests for extra-virgin olive oil serve only to expose a first-timer. Bergero's idea of a connoisseur is the habitué who invariably selects for herself a grilled two-pounder, sucks the last pinkish traces of fish from each individual bone, and then stacks the bones on her plate in a neat, compact pile.
In the mornings, Bergero tours the fishing ports of Marseille in his 20-foot motorboat, seeking the most prized catches. He is especially proud of buying from Eric and André Fromion, who employ the long-line method of pulling fish from the sea and never let ice touch them. At the Old Port's open-air fish market, the Fromions sell to a discriminating, deep-pocketed clientele that includes Restaurant Passédat.
Gérald Passédat also buys from several other small-volume fishermen patronized by Bergero, who takes credit, as well, for having introduced his fellow shopper to the superior-tasting rougets that feed on the seaweed growing directly below the waterfront windows of Restaurant Passédat. The Mediterranean fish that now dominate Passédat's imagination and menu—rouget, loup, daurade, pagre—mark his return to a true cuisine marseillaise, albeit a wide-ranging one that absorbs the city's immigrant influences. "Before, I was compelled to offer grilled lobster, and it bored me to death." says Passédat. "Now I'm creating my own cuisine, and Marseille is coming out. You can sense the freedom."
The best young chefs in Marseille are searching for their own middle ground, for somewhere in between the old and the new, low and high, Bergero and Passédat. For Guillaume Sourrieu at L'Épuisette, that means keeping a traditional bouillabaisse on the menu opposite his tagine of sole with braised baby artichokes and Middle Eastern spices. For Christian Ernst, it means dividing the menu at Le Charles Livon—in a converted pizzeria on the boulevard of the same name—between simpler, inexpensive "Bistrot" selections (such as a mussel gratin with garlic and parsley) and their pricier, more elaborate "Gastro" counterparts (like the mille-feuilles of cèpes and parmesan-coated artichokes with truffle sauce). For Florent Saugeron, formerly of Vong, in London, and now chef of the comparatively subdued Lemon Grass, it means creating a fusion cuisine that is more Mediterranean-Asian than French-Asian. And for Dominique Frérard, it means pairing his tuna tartare at Les Trois Forts with panisses and the warm associations those fried chickpea cakes evoke—for native diners at least—of lazy summer Sundays, when these snacks are purchased at kiosks in the fishing village of L'Estaque. Most plates are grounded with some component or flavor recognizable to the Marseillais palate.
At Une Table, au Sud, Lévy is rethinking Marseille's most familiar foods. He first shocked wary diners by turning the beloved tomate à la provençale on its head: He replaced the usual savory filling of vegetables, meats, and herbs with a sweet one of fruit and nuts and moved the dish into the dessert column. Subsequent savory-to-sweet reversals included a black olive clafoutis, a reconstructed artichoke (poached artichoke mousse and artichoke-leaf confit), and a fennel "tarte Tatin" with carrot caramel. "I had made caramelized fennel with fish," explains Lévy. "When I saw that the fennel resembled apple, I knew I had to do a Tatin." He soon flip-flopped the formula, devising dessert-inspired appetizers like his salmon tartare crumble, whose brittle crumb topping has ginger and garlic replacing much of the sugar. Even though Lévy didn't necessarily have to leave Paris to create these whimsicalities, his choice of materials—artichokes, fennel, tomatoes, black olives, garlic—essentially reveals a chef who is engrossed in a Mediterranean milieu and has no thought of looking back to the capital. The fundamental objective he shares with his Marseille colleagues is to interpret a distinct Old Port flavor, one that has been enriched by 26 centuries of importation, immigration, and transplantation.
It is this sea change, this return to a local and regional identity, that is at the heart of Marseille's emergence as a trendy travel destination. "We once wanted to be more like a second Paris than a city of the south," says Bernard Aubert, music director for La Fiesta des Suds, Marseille's annual festival of music, art, and food from, as its name implies, not just the south of France but many of the world's southern regions. "But people have always come to Marseille to experience what they can't find elsewhere: a mix of southern cultures."
WHERE TO EAT
L'Escale
4 Avenue
Alexandre Delabre
04-91-73-16-78
Tiboulen de Maïre
Calanque Blanche
Route des Goudes
04-91-25-26-30
Restaurant Passédat
Le Petit Nice
Anse de Maldormé
04-91-59-25-92
L'Épuisette
Rue du Vallon des Auffes
04-91-52-17-82
Le Charles Livon
89 Boulevard
Charles Livon
04-91-52-22-41
Lemon Grass
8 Rue Fort Notre Dame
04-91-33-97-65
Les Trois Forts
Sofitel Marseille
Vieux-Port
36 Boulevard
Charles Livon
04-91-15-59-56
Une Table, au Sud
2 Quai du Port
04-91-90-63-53