What Does Robuchon Know?

They could have shot Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot in Sainte-Maries-de-la-Mer. They didn’t: it was actually filmed in Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, up on the Atlantic Coast, just below Brittany. However, Saintes-Maries still has the air of a little petit-bourgeois holiday resort, with shops selling articles de plage and maillots de bain, and an esplanade with inexpensive restaurants selling fruits de mer and that old staple of French cooking, pizza. The harbour, it is true, is full mostly of little gin palaces, rather than fishing boats, but the town retains that wistful air of the out-of-season resort for the best part of eleven months of the year.