Restaurants for Camila and the Boys

 Since we’ll be in Aix-en-Provence for 6 weeks, when Camila and the boys are there, I’ll concentrate on restaurants with dishes they might like to eat rather than Pieds et Paquets, Agneau au Lait, and Magret de Canard.  However, I must admit that not one of the restaurants on my Google Map list was among Rick Steves’ recommendations, and not one of Rick’s recommendations was on my list.  Again however, the one recommendation of his for London that we went to was really horrid and many of his choices in Aix seem to be chosen for their al fresco ambiance.  Has he even been to them?  He says they « are carefully reviewed by my friends at Tastes of Provence food tours ».  Eh bien…  back to my list.

For Camila, there’s a little restaurant near the Adagio called Restaurant l’Envie that has creative and nicely presented dishes with lots of flowers but, surprisingly, no website.  Their desserts look particularly  attractive.  You can see photos of their dishes at The Fork, and make reservations too.

The boys should like Le Four Aixois (and us too) which specializes in wood-fired pizza.  The mushroom pizza looks good to me, even if it doesn’t have slices of truffle on top.  Hopefully the boys will order something besides cheese and pepperoni, maybe a moitié/moitié, which is half cheese and half anchovy.  Anchovies are big in the south of France.  Did you know that tapenade is traditionally made with anchovies and capers, not just olives?

And yes, I think we’ll be eating pizza more than once.  Some of the pizzerias serve their pizzas Italian style with part of the ingredients added après cuisson or after cooking.  Pizzeria Delices de Capoue is one of those and we should try this après cuisson style at least once, since they have some rather interesting compositions.  If we go to Marseilles, we might visit one of La Bonne Mère locations for pizza where they name them after Marcel Pagnol characters.  In Marseille the influence of Neapolitan immigrants is quite strong.

One of Rick Steves’ recommendations that I would like to try is La Fromagerie du Passage which I had saved in my food shop list but evidently they have a restaurant on the second floor and the roof where you can order a platter of 5 cheeses for 22€.  Rick says you get bread and a salad with that.  They also have a platter for 4 people with 25 different cheeses for 95€.  Do you think the boys would be interested?  I know Papi would be.  They also serve a hamburger.  Or boeuf tartare.

Les 25 Fromages Differents

There are also a couple of restaurants with the Michelin Bib Gourmand.  I don’t think we’d be able to afford a Michelin starred restaurant but these are supposed to be gourmet level and not too expensive.  One is Licandro le Bistro which has a formule for lunch that isn’t too expensive (34€).  Another is Vintrépide which also has a formule for lunch (complet 34€, entrée/plat or plat/dessert 28€).  Its inpiration of the week for lunch is lamb ravioli, cod with artichoke and cherry clafouti for dessert, which sounds pretty good to me.  A third Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant is Coté Cour but their prices are a bit higher.

Because Aix is a university town, there are a lot of international options including Moroccan, Thai, Japanese, and Korean.  There’s an upscale Thai restaurant, Phatsara, that has a large menu and nicely presented dishes.  There’s also a Breton creperie: Le P’tit Breton and an upscale Ethiopian restaurant, Chez Ama.  Upscale as opposed to a hole in the wall.  Mary Vallejo ate there and said it was very good.

And of course, we can always cook in the apartment, can’t we?  And the markets also have takeout food, especially Middle Eastern.  I even found a rotisserie chicken takeout not too far away from the hotel.  I don’t think we’ll starve.  What would you like?

 

Cabillaud / artichaut

 

Clafoutis cerise