The best way to get a parking spot at the night food market in Audrix, in southwest France, is to drive up to the tiny village in a Citroën 2CV. The ancient cars—an aggregation of tin cans and elastic bands first produced in 1949 to carry a farmer, his wife, two children, and a dairy churn over plowed fields without spilling a precious drop of milk—are so beloved, the French treat them like pets.
Although I had the Dersh—as the Deux Chevaux, or two-horsepower Citroën, is fondly nicknamed—the only spot, if it could be called that, was a very small gap between a foreigner’s rented automobile and a pack of motorcycles. I nosed alongside to measure the distance. A passing villager set down his basket and gave a peremptory wave: “Descendez.” I turned off the replacement bathroom light switch that operates my car instead of a key and obeyed. He gave another wave to his son. Together they picked up the Dersh and dropped it into the one space the night market had to offer.
With the car now slotted into the sloping hillside, we followed the crowd toward the minuscule town square. There, refectory tables covered in butcher paper were set in front of a 12th-century church. From their baskets, picnickers pulled out plates, cutlery, and glasses in anticipation of the evening’s feast. I grabbed a chair and put down a place setting. Then I began to wander among the merchants, trying to decide what to eat.
Audrix, population 290, is in the heart of the Périgord Noir. Officially, the département is known as the Dordogne, after the majestic river running through its gorges and plains. But the locals call it the Périgord and divide it into four regions: the Green, the White, the Purple, and the Black—where English second-home owners and retirees joke that they are taking back Aquitaine one house at a time. (When Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry I of England in 1152, her prime dowry was the countryside from the Périgord west to Bordeaux and south to the Pyrenees.)
The night market at Audrix is the original of its kind. Held every Saturday between the last weekend in June and mid-September, it was launched over a decade ago by Mayor Claude Thuillier, who was looking to expand the selling opportunities available to the area’s artisanal businesses. “It was clear to me that if we were going to run a farmers market,” he says, “we would have to offer something different from all the daytime ones. Who would come at night just to buy a kilo of vegetables?” Audrix already held two to three feasts each summer, cooked by the community for itself. “To extend that idea to an evening Saturday market offering the food of local producers, cooked by them, was a natural development.”
To help with this venture, Thuillier called on Stéphane Bounichou, the village’s sole cheesemaker and one of its lead purveyors, and made him Président de la Société du Marché. Next they drew up a list of farmers and artisans they would invite to join. Ten to twelve now attend, selling everything necessary for a modest feast, from gésier salads (confit duck gizzards with walnuts) to sweet-as-candy walnut tarts and red and Bergerac rosé wines. “We pay fifteen euros each Saturday for our space,” Bounichou explains, “and eighty euros for the whole summer for insurance, electricity, setup and cleanup, and the orchestra.” The Mairie (town hall) and the commune it runs get nothing but the value of involving the community.
Since then, dozens more night markets have followed suit in towns all across the Dordogne. At Audrix, it’s a Marché des Producteurs de Pays. This means it showcases only the food of people who have grown or raised and slaughtered what they are cooking to order using local recipes. So far, according to Thuillier, there are only ten of these purist markets across the Dordogne. But if you add night markets where commercial businesses also sell their wares, you’ll find that there’s a place to eat in an outdoor communal setting in almost every village every evening but Sunday.
Surrounded by villagers and clusters of tourists, I stroll around, debating whether to opt for a bowl of Tourin blanchi (garlic-and-egg soup) or a helping of haricots aux couennes—pork rinds melted almost into oblivion among beans cooked slowly in tomato sauce. Or maybe I’ll have lamb, thrown on the grill by the woman who raised and slaughtered it. Another smallholder has salads of mixed organic leaves dressed in a vinaigrette of walnut oil. (Walnut trees are bountiful in the area.) There are walnuts, too, in caramel tarts from the local pâtissier, and local strawberries: the Mara des Bois, with its musty flavor of coppice clearings, and the vanilla-scented Arabelle. Recognizing picnickers from the previous week, sellers cry, “Salut!” Cheeks are kissed, children patted.
Under the tiled arcade housing a bread oven as big as a garden shed, musicians unpack their instruments and tune up. The baker snatches out rags plugging the air holes in the oven’s stone walls, reducing the searing heat within. He’s been up there baking since late afternoon. Carefully removing the heavy iron door, he slides his wooden paddle deep inside to sweep out loaf after loaf of steaming bread. Artisans who spent the morning selling their produce at their farms or the nearby markets set out fresh displays for the evening feast, their vans now parked around the edges of Audrix’s only square.
For Bounichou, the cheesemaker, Saturday is the longest day of the week. He rises at five to fill the trailer he drives to Saturday’s farmers market. From five in the evening, he’s up in Audrix, stock refreshed, selling plates of his cheeses. Home around one in the morning, he’s up again at five for the Sunday farmers market. When his herd of cows expanded from three to five and he was stumped for suitable names, a resident wit suggested using those of women renowned for their toughness. As a result, picnickers in Audrix tuck into cheeses from the milk of ’illary Clinton and Margaret T’atcher. “Prenez de l’aillou!” he encourages. Aillou, a confection he’s invented, consists of fromage frais containing copious handfuls of freshly chopped herbs and garlic. He sells it to complement the baker’s warm bread, but it’s just as sublime when taken home as a dip for eggplant slices deep-fried in batter.
Inside their truck beside the church, Béatrice and Guy Franc fire up their hot plates and check their refrigerator for supplies of magrets de canard and foie gras. Guy Franc was a military helicopter pilot until his father fell ill, at which time he decided to take over the family farm. Now he raises ducks and geese that he kills and then sells both from home and at a couple of nearby farmers markets. He seldom eats them; that would be his profit lost. During the Audrix night market, he can move up to 90 plates of the foie gras he flash-fries dry to release its abundant fat. “Et puis,” he demonstrates, “you temper it with a swirl of balsamic vinegar and honey to balance the richness of the liver.” At a Michelin-starred restaurant, a serving like his would cost around 20 euros. Here, this summer, it costs seven. “The aim was to keep Audrix alive,” explains Bounichou. “And we don’t want to take it any further. We want to keep it intimate and authentic.”
Whereas Audrix has been successful in this undertaking, as the night markets have expanded in number, they have evolved beyond Thuillier’s original quest to promote only local growers and producers. Along with the Marchés des Producteurs de Pays have come general Marchés Nocturnes, attracting commercial enterprises that often travel from miles away and attend several different night markets a week. (At Audrix you can eat only traditional Périgord dishes; at general Marchés Nocturnes, you will find pad Thai and other foreign foods.)
Cadouin’s Marché Nocturne, for instance, looks, at first sight, like something out of a Bruegel painting. (Indeed, through the centuries, pilgrims have flocked to this golden stone abbey, which was founded in 1115, to see the Holy Shroud of Cadouin, yet another piece of fabric believed by the faithful to have wrapped the head of Christ.) Squinting your eyes and peering through smoke from the barbecue, you can almost imagine hessian robes and thick linen skirts in place of today’s tight jeans and shrunken blouses. Almost. After all, there is a pizza van parked next to a group of women from an out-of-town butcher who are spearing bulk-bought sausages onto plates mounded with mustard. Gaudy toys hang from the poles of a stall swarming with children. Nearby, a woman sells cheap sugary sweets, while an Indonesian woman who runs a takeout service from her dining room mans a booth selling saté and noodle dishes. In the center of it all, surrounded by jiving dancers, a band pumps out the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” macerating Jagger’s lyrics in between French ballads that have the youngsters who’ve flown in on a cheap Ryanair flight from Britain rolling their eyes. “Tu danses?” a French guy with a mullet asks an English camper in a ripped T-shirt.
“Parisians come down with their wives or mistresses to eat Asian in the Dordogne?” muses Raymond Bounichou, father of Stéphane, the cheesemonger, who has stolen away for the evening to observe the other side of the night markets. Here, the dining profile is reversed—tourists outpacing the locals.
But at Audrix, things are as they should be. Couples square-dance under the arcade. Retirees in their Sunday best lick their lips at the prospect of rotisserie-grilled lamb and fresh strawberry tarts. Franck Hammon, the director of an area children’s camp, leads kids around in a donkey cart. When Hammon eventually stops, it is to sweep a pile of donkey droppings into a sack and then interrupt the music to grab a microphone. “To those who brought their own plates and cutlery, thank you!” he says. (Feeling smug, those of us who have done just that look around critically.) “We must protect the environment. To those who brought plastic, not next time, please! And make sure you dump your rubbish in the correct recycle box!” It’s Audrix’s ambition to get to a point where the night markets generate no garbage at all.
The chief of police from the valley below strolls by with a plate of grilled goat cheese and walnuts on salad leaves. When this night market began, the mayor ran his own stall, cooking pommes de terre sarladaise—thin slices of potato stewed slowly in duck fat till golden and tossed with a pungent handful of chopped garlic and parsley. The police chief would order an entire pan, then request that it be turned into an omelet with 12 eggs. “How many will that be feeding?” I asked when I first witnessed this. “My wife and me,” he shrugged.
These days there are too many visitors for the mayor to peel and cook potatoes to order. But he hasn’t let go of his original mission for the market: to feed local people and guests dishes from local producers.
At the end of the evening, unparking the Dersh is easy. The rented car that gobbled up the space has gone. Perhaps to find a more salacious night market, one with more Rolling Stones and less square dancing.
Details
Staying There
Located in Trémolat, an enchanting sandstone village close to the Dordogne River, Le Vieux Logis (011-33-5-53-22-80-06; vieux-logis.com) is an intimate four-star Relais & Châteaux hotel with a swimming pool and immaculate gardens. La Belle Etoile (011-33-5-53-29-51-44; hotel-belle-etoile-dordogne.fr), a pretty hotel with plain bedrooms, is in the center of La Roque-Gageac, one of the Dordogne’s most beautiful (and seasonally crowded) riverside villages. Ideally situated for drives to the area’s renowned caves, Hôtel Du Centenaire (011-33-5-53-06-68-68; hotelducentenaire.fr) is located in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, a tourist trap that’s home to a highly regarded museum devoted to Paleolithic man (the Musée National de Préhistoire). Hostellerie Du Passeur (011-33-5-53-06-97-13; hostellerie-du-passeur.com), also in Les Eyzies, is a lovely ivy-covered hotel on the river that feels worlds away from the bustle. Hôtel Du Château (011-33-5-53-07-23-50), in Campagne, is a modest Périgord-style mansion opposite a grand private castle in a hamlet in the heart of cave country. Simple, clean, with a rustic restaurant that serves standard Périgord dishes, L’auberge Médiévale (011-33-5-53-07-24-02; auberge-medievale.fr), in Audrix, is next to the church—and the weekly night market. Note: Few hotels in this part of France have air-conditioning.
Eating There
Possibly the finest restaurant in the Périgord, Le Vieux Logis (see above) offers such exceptional treatments of French classics that it has become a beloved weekend retreat for politicians, actors, and other luminaries down from Paris. Le Bistro d’en Face (05-53-22-80-69), an offshoot of Le Vieux Logis, serves both typical bistro fare (grills, daubes) and top-flight offal, including pieds de porc (pigs’ feet) and andouillettes de Troyes (tripe sausage). On a terrace overlooking the river, La Belle Etoile (see above) lures tourists and locals alike with well-executed dishes, including oeufs en cocotte aux langoustes (eggs in a ramekin with crayfish) and foie gras poêlé aux fruits blancs (duck liver sautéed with soft fruits). (Don’t let the plainness of the décor put you off.) La Métairie (05-53-29-65-32), in Beyssac, is worth a visit for snail-and-wild-mushroom ragout and ground pork and lobster roasted in pork caul. At Restaurant de L’abbatiale Chez Julien (05-53-63-21-08), which is situated in the garden of a medieval church in Paunat, you can enjoy simply cooked (and absolutely delicious) duck and fish dishes.