Gold medal for taste for Marseille restaurants

In three days, the Olympic flame will arrive in Marseille. And, without boasting, the city could just as easily have organized a “Taste Olympics”: the local culinary scene has recently undergone a profound transformation, and the world will finally discover what the cuisine of the Old Port has in its stomach . Because Phocaean meals are no longer limited to aioli, bouillabaisse or pied packets, as delicious as they are… A new generation of chefs is blowing a wind as strong as the mistral on local plates.

“The Port of Marseille is a very good showcase of the innovation that Enedis brings” (Marianne Laigneau)

However, it took time to see the “cuisine of the sun” unfold. At Petit Nice (three stars since 2008), chef Gérald Passedat long felt alone as a representative of Marseille cuisine, because, before the culinary revival of Canebière that began in the 2000s, there were good restaurants, but very traditional, like La Côte de Bœuf or Chez Vincent. Little by little, Gérald Passedat, with cooks like Lionel Lévy, Guillaume Sourrieu or Arnaud Carton de Grammont, set out to free southern cuisine from its stereotypes, notably with the Gourméditerranée association, founded in 2012.

The unique taste of Marseille has finally appeared. Its culinary mix is ​​due to its double “orientation”: Provençal cuisine turned inland, but also Mediterranean, thanks to its port open to the South and the East. Marseille welcomes the whole world; now, its historical recipes are evolving (originally, there were no tomatoes in the bouillabaisse!) and it is finally exploiting its living terroir, with its sustainable line fishing and its permaculture neo-farmers… Some chefs They quickly understood, like Alexandre Mazzia, who shook up everything in 2014 with his restaurant AM. After an atypical career path made up of travel and professional basketball (he will also carry the Olympic flame), this chef-poet deploys carefully thought-out dishes which will earn him three Michelin stars in 2021.

First event outside Paris in 2004

This region then attracted other chefs and establishments flourished: L’Idéal (Julia Sammut), Une Table, au Sud (Ludovic Turac), Saisons (Julien Diaz), Signature (Coline Faulquier), Cédrat (Éric Maillet) . The Fooding guide has accompanied this blossoming from its infancy, in 2004, the year of its first event organized outside Paris, in Marseille: “ Since then, we have had award-winning Marseille restaurants every year, notes Christine Doublet, the assistant director of the guide. This year, between shops, wine cellars, restaurants and hotels, we have identified 100 good addresses in the city. » Three Marseille restaurants appear on the 2024 list: the Razzia sandwich shop, the Atelier Renata table d’hôtes and the Ripaille bistro.

In 2018, the opening of the “sophistroquet” La Mercerie, in the popular district of Noailles, was a landmark and emulated (one of their faithful, Benoît Cadot, exfiltrated to open Prémices). Today, the list of exciting restaurants is now long and varied. There are many Lebanese restaurants, punchy pizzerias like wine cellars, tables set up in atypical places or author’s addresses… Let us cite pell-mell the bistronomic Regain by Sarah Chougnet-Strudel, the very meaty La Femme du Boucher by Laëtitia Visse, the canteen-wine bar Caterine by Marie Dijon, Pétrin Couchette, a bakery-sandwich shop-coffee shop, or Livingston by Valentin Raffali, one of the most inventive chefs of the moment, currently a candidate for Top Chief.

© LTD / instagram/@ludovic_turac

“ These are very different addresses and often run by Marseille chefs.continues Christine Doublet. Today, they cook local fishing, vegetables from regional producers and create their own cuisine, not necessarily “Provençal”. » Except to revisit it, like Christian Qui, who serves his “bouillabaisse du turfu” [du futur] take away.

A sign of the craze, many Parisian chefs are arriving in Marseille: recently, Céline Chung, high priestess of Chinese cuisine in Paris, has just installed her Gros Bao, her Chinese rotisseries and her baozis (steamed buns) on three floors instead from the Marseille institution Toinou. Has the Paris-Marseille rivalry finally lived out? In any case, the Old Port no longer has anything to envy of the banks of the Seine.