Come and taste Marseille

A food tour of Marseille

As a great lover of restaurants and good food, today I’m embarking on a food tour of the streets of Marseille. I’m going to let you in on the gustatory secrets of our beautiful Phocaean city…

First culinary stage: a tasting basket

It’s 11.30am and we’re meeting our guide Ben in front of Marseille City Hall. Once everyone is assembled, our first stop is at a well-known restaurant in the Panier district, Bobolivo.

We begin our gourmet escape with a quintessentially French concoction: camembert roasted in pastis (the emblematic drink of Marseille and the South of France). We are welcomed into the restaurant where a table has been reserved for us. Around this table we chat with Ben, who explains the history of the Panierdistrict (Marseille’s first historic district).

A mix of flavours and anecdotes, bringing together Marseille and French culture in a single bite. For me, this roast camembert will remain engraved on my taste buds.

Marseilles tapas at the old port on the south side

We then head to the other side of the Vieux-Port district, to “Les Arcenaulx” on Cours d’Estienne d’Orves, once a large canal that was home to boats. This multi-faceted place represents an image of a forgotten era in Marseille. It’s a bookshop, souvenir shop and restaurant all in one .

We were lucky enough to be able to sample the specialities of Marseille around a table in the form of tapas to share. Surrounded by bottles of Pastis and rosés from Provence.Ben advises us on the local specialities:

Cuttlefish, tapenade, panisses and other Marseilles favourites were on the menu.

A sweet break for the last stop

After our tapas stop, we made a stop at the biscuit shop“La Cure Gourmande“on Marseille’s legendary thoroughfare, “ La Canebière“, where we were offered the chance to sample some of Marseille’s sweet and shortbread specialities. The shop plunges us into the heart of the Provençal countryside.

It’s now 2.30pm, three hours after the start of our activity, and we end our tour with a gourmet touch in the cosmopolitan district of Noailles. A tasting session in an oriental patisserie where the snacks are overflowing on all sides. We sample these famous pastries made mainly from honey, almonds, walnuts, dates and sesame seeds. The tour ends on a sweet note.

This was the last stop on our food tour, and it was with a full belly that we ended our gourmet tour. We were able to discover Marseille not only through its gourmet flavours, but also through different districts with a rich history. What I’ll take away from this experience is a wonderful discovery and an interesting culinary diversity brought together in a single city: Marseille!