Category: food and culture

Marseille and pastis

When we first mooted the idea of visiting Marseille to our Parisian colleagues we were met with cries of surprise (‘quelle horreur’) and concerned attempts by them to direct us elsewhere in France! We got the distinct impression that the city was considered a lot different and perhaps a lot less satisfactory than other key locations such as Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux. This only made a visit to the city a more attractive proposition for us and we were not disappointed.

We don’t want to rely on the cliches of the ‘it’s like Naples or Liverpool’ kind (but see ‘Cities on the edge stand tall’  https://voxeurop.eu/en/cities-on-the-edge-stand-tall/) but we felt very at home walking in the streets of the Vieux Port and elsewhere. In particular, the families enjoying themselves at the ‘town beach’ at Plage des Catalans reminded us of a ‘day out at the seaside’ in the  North of England (with a lot more sunshine of course!).

Marseille is the home of our favourite aperitif, pastis, a far more preferable drink in our opinion to other aniseed flavoured liquors such as sambuca, raki and the fearsome aguadiente of Colombia. Best drunk in combination with chilled water it is usually mixed in a ratio of around five parts of the latter to one part of the former. The liquor reacts with the water turning the spirit’s usual colour (which varies from brown to a golden shade), ‘milky’ in the reaction known as ‘louche’.

Pastis was first developed in Marseille by Paul Ricard in 1932 and today his brand along with its sister brand, ‘51’ are hugely popular and between them, probably the best selling in France. Although both of these drinks are fine, we prefer pastis produced by smaller producers of which there are several in Marseille and elsewhere in Provence. Our particular favourites are Henri Bardouin (https://www.distilleries-provence.com/en/cms/pastis) and Janot.

Pastis and its association with Marseille features in Deray’s fine 1970 gangster film ‘Borsalino’ with Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the film the fictional distiller M. Boccace’s milky liqueur crops up in various bar scenes. The city’s atmospheric Le Panier district is prominent throughout. The film is great fun and well worth watching. Although set in the 1930’s, stylistically it kind of reminded us of Penn’s 1967 epic Bonnie and Clyde.

Marseille still has several smaller pastis producers. In particular we think that the superb pastis ‘Un Marseillais’ of the Cristal Limiñana distillery is worth mentioning (see https://cristal-liminana.com/en/).

As the name Limiñana suggests, it was two Spanish brother who started producing Anis, the Spanish aniseed flavoured liquer, in Algiers in 1884. The Anis was sold in Algeria under the name Cristal Anis. The Cristal Limiñana business was later founded in Marseille in 1962 by one of the brothers who had Algeria left for France following independence in 1962. The same distillery still produces Cristal Anis as well as the aforementioned ‘Un Marseillais’. You can tour the distillery (appointment only) by contacting infos@cristal-liminana.com in advance to arrange a suitable date.

Although the most famous dish of the city is bouillabaisse, it was Corsican food and wine in Marseille that really caught our attention.

And of course, pastis. The brand Casanis was first distilled in Bastia, Corsica in 1925. The business was later transferred to Marseille where it is based today.

À votre santé!

(And whilst we are on the subject of Marseille, we recommend the much lauded 2009 movie by Jacques Audiard ‘A Prophet’. The film highlights the crime and deprivation which still haunt the city).

Salvador de Bahia

Salvador (‘São Salvador de Bahia de Todos os Santos’) is the state capital of that most culturally important province of Brasil, Bahia. 

The city itself is a combination of great beauty and culture, old wealth and a violent history, poverty and inequality. It is quite unlike anywhere else in Brasil we have visited. 

The centrepiece of the old historic quarter, the ‘Cidade Alta’, is called ‘Pelourinho’. With its cobbled streets of beautiful buildings, groups of tourists, churches and shops (together with a not insignificant security presence), Pelourinho (the name means ‘whipping post’) was once the site of the largest slave auction in the Americas and is now the most well known part of the city to visit.  Pelourinho kind of sums up the city’s inherent contradictions with great wealth and privilege side by side with poverty and crime.

The Jorge Amado museum in the Pelourinho is centred on the life and works of that revered Brasilian writer. A son of the town of Itabuna in the south of Bahia, much of Amado’s work is based in and around Salvador including the novel  ‘Dona Flor and her two husbands’. An internationally popular book, it became the most successful Brasilian film of all time when it was released in 1976. Its box office success was only equalled in 2010 with the release of the violent ‘Tropa de Elite’ (we prefer the warm comedy of ‘Dona Flor’ and its glimpses of the Cidade Alta before it was ‘cleaned up’). The film was notable for the performances of Sonia Braga as ‘Dona Flor’ and José Wilker as the reprobate ‘Vadinho’. Bahian food (our personal favourite in Brasil) with its clear African influences, features heavily in the book with each chapter introduced by a recipe from Dona Flor who runs cookery classes when she is not hiding her money from Vadinho. Her ‘Moqueca de Siri Mole’ (a seafood stew made from a local species of crab) features in the film and  a recipe from the Folha de São Paulo is at https://receitas.folha.com.br/receita/866

Our favourite dish from Bahia is ‘Bobo de Camarão’, a rich stew of shrimps, manioc flour, coconut and herbs. Palm oil (known locally as ‘dendê’) with its distinctive orange colour adds a characteristic flavour to the dish.

Our favourite novel by Jorge Amado is his 1937 work ‘Capitães de Areia’ (‘Sand Captains’ in English). This is a hard hitting novel of a gang of street urchins who make their living stealing and hustling in Salvador. For all its beauty and tourist popularity the city is awash with inequality and poverty and this novel, although over 80 years old, captures something of this harsh reality to dramatic effect. The novel is available in English and is highly recommended.

The musical culture of Salvador and the state of Bahia generally is well known in Brasil and throughout the world. Listing the famous musicians from this region would take time as there are so many but Ivete Sangalo, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethãnia are some of the most famous. Perhaps less well known but our personal favourites from the region are the samba legend Riachão and the influential Oscar da Penha, better known as ‘Batatinha’.

A live film of Batatinha singing his song ‘Direito de sambar’ is at

‘Direito de sambar’ is also featured in the 2011 film version of Amado’s ‘Capitães de Areia’.

The São Paulo singer Adriana Moreira based her entire first album on Batatinha’s  songs. Here she is singing ‘Direito de sambar’.

Her second album ‘Cordão’, released in 2012 is one of the best samba albums from Brasil in our opinion and this televised version of the song ‘Fuzuê’ is taken from the same long standing Brazilian music programme ‘Ensaio’ which also featured a broadcast of ‘Batatinha’ back in 1995.