Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

The thon is the most unfishlike fish that one ever cast eyes upon. He looks like a cross between a porpoise and a mackerel in shape, and is the size of the former. It is the most beautifully modelled fish imaginable; round and plump, with smoothly fashioned head and tail, it looks as if it were expressly designed to slip rapidly through the water, which in reality it does at an astonishing rate. Its proportions are not graceful or delicately fashioned at all; they are rather clumsy; but it is perfectly smooth and scaleless, and looks, and feels too, as if it were made of hard rubber.

In short the thon is the most unemotional-looking thing in the whole fish and animal world, with no more realism to it than if it were whittled out of a log of wood and covered with stove-polish. Caught, killed, and cured (by being cut into cubes and packed in oil in little tins), the thon forms a great delicacy among the assortment of hors-d’œuvres which the Paris and Marseilles restaurant-keepers put before one.

One of the great features of Martigues is its cookery, its fish cookery in particular, for the bouillabaisse of Martigues leads the world. It is far better than that which is supplied to “stop-over” tourists at Marseilles, en route to Egypt, the East, or the Riviera.

Thackeray sang the praises of bouillabaisse most enthusiastically in his “Ballad of the Bouillabaisse,” but then he ate it at a restaurant “on a street in Paris,” and he knew not the real thing as Chabas dishes it up at Martigues’s “Grand Hôtel.”

Chabas is known for fifty miles around. He is not a Martigaux, but comes from Cavaillon, the home of all good cooks, or at least one may say unreservedly that all the people of Cavaillon are good cooks: “les maîtres de la cuisine Provençale” they are known to all bons-vivants.

Neither is madame a Martigaux; she is an Arlesienne (and wears the Arlesienne coiffe at all times); Arles is a town as celebrated for its fair women as is Cavaillon for its cooks.

Together M. and Madame Chabas hold a big daily reception in the cuisine of the hotel, formerly the kitchen of an old convent. M. Paul is a “handy man;” he cooks easily and naturally, and carries on a running conversation with all who drop in for a chat. Most cooks are irascible and cranky individuals, but not so M. Paul; the more, the merrier with him, and not a drop too much oil (or too little), not a taste too much of garlic, nor too much saffron in the bouillabaisse, nor too much salt or pepper on the rôti or the légumes. It’s all chance apparently with him, for like all good cooks he never measures anything, but the wonder is that he doesn’t get rattled and forget, with the mixed crew of pensionnaires and neighbours always at his elbow, warming themselves before the same fire that heats his pots and pans and furnishes the flame for the great broche on which sizzle the well-basted petits oiseaux.

Bouillabaisse is always the plat-du-jour at the “Grand Hôtel,” and it’s the most wonderfully savoury dish that one can imagine—as Chabas cooks it.

Outside a Provençal cookery-book one would hardly expect to find a recipe for bouillabaisse that one could accept with confidence, but on the other hand no writer could possibly have the temerity to write of Provence and not have his say about the wonderful fish stew known to lovers of good-living the world over. It is more or less a risky proceeding, but to omit it altogether would be equally so, so the attempt is here made.

“La bouillabaisse,” of which poets have sung, has its variations and its intermittent excellencies, and sometimes it is better than at others; but always it is a dish which gives off an aroma which is the very spirit of Provence, an unmistakable reminiscence of Martigues, where it is at its best.