I remember Coustellet market twenty years ago, when there were no more than ten or twelve small vans in the village parking area. You could buy local vegetables and fruit, some goat cheese, half a dozen eggs, and that was about it. Today, the market has grown until it covers nearly an acre, and in high season it’s packed every Sunday morning.

Wine and conversation flowed, the courses came and went, and I was treated to a demonstration of the French genius for the gastronomic marathon, the ability to spend as long at the table as other nationalities spend watching television. The size of French appetites never fails to impress me, nor does the Frenchman’s ability to absorb vast amounts o

Where else would people get worked up about salt? To the rest of the world, salt is a necessary but anonymous part of the diet, about as fascinating as a glass of tap water. But not in France. Here, salt is something that gourmets argue about. Some of them will tell you that the ultimate saline experience issel de Guérande, the gray crystallized se

What is there to like about this catalogue of Provençal quirks, most of which are inconvenient and seem to have been devised with the express purpose of taking up as much of your time as possible? An errand that might take half an hour in other, more streamlined societies can easily occupy an entire morning. Appointments are postponed or forgotten.