Having spent some more time here, we really think Fayence is a beautiful hillside town. Our house is close enough to walk everywhere, and we even walked over to the neighboring small town of Tourettes two mornings. Fayence has a market three days a week full of great produce, meats, cheeses, clothes, toys, linens, etc. and there are additional artisan markets some evenings. There are several restaurants, and the two we’ve eaten in so far – La Farigoulette and Restaurant La France – have both been spectacular. The meat at La France was delicious served with a brown butter sauce with mushrooms. Then the fish at La Fagoulette was roasted and served with fennel greens and fennel pollen – amazing. Equally, appetizers and deserts at both places have been excellent. I was surprised to see so much raw fish being used here, but I suppose that we aren’t more than an hour from Italy, and they do make plenty of crudo over there.

 

 

We went into Antibes for a day trip. For a beach town, there isn’t a lot of great beach. But the old city is nice, the food we had was good, and the Picasso Museum (closed, of course, the day we tried to go) looked to be pretty interesting as it’s located in the Grimaldi Palace, right on a cliff in the old city. We tried to go to the beach and do a bit of snorkeling, but we just got in the water when it started to rain, then Leo spotted a pretty large jellyfish, and so we called it a day. So did many others, it seems, so the road out to the A8 was very slow-going.

 

 

The other day trip we did was to Nice. Here, we did two long walks: one through the old town and one on the Promenade des Anglais to the Quai des Etats-units and up to the castle hill. I remember the rocky coastline of Nice, but I didn’t remember how painful it is to walk on without sandals. Wow. And the waves were really crashing that day, which is normally a good thing, but in this case, it meant that we couldn’t easily get in or out of the water. Once you got beyond the break, coming in was tough because you’d get pounded on the rocks, try to stand, hurt your feet, and get swept up in another wave. Next time I’ll get some water shoes – if I bother with a next time. I now see the value of a sandy beach.

The food of Nice is really pretty excellent. Besides the pebbled beaches, my other etched memory of Nice from more than 20 years ago is of the pan bagnats. A pan bagnat is basically a big roll (they claim it’s unique to Nice – it’s sort of like a large soft Kaiser roll with no seeds and a good flavor) sliced in half, doused in olive oil and salt, and then layered with lots of things, almost always including tuna, hard-boiled egg, anchovies, tomato, lettuce, and olives. I’ve also seen peppers and onions in some. It’s a pretty big, and cheap, way to eat, and that’s likely why I first tried it when I was a starving student. But it’s great, and the one I had in Nice made me want to make them at home. Mine was just from some window cafe – but I had a better, haut cuisine version that night.

The other food we found that seems to have its origins in Nice (although we had more of it in the market in Fayence) is socca cakes. These are large pancake or crepe-like flatbreads. You get a piece of the bread, often sliced up into smaller pieces. The best ones we had are the ones in Fayence, but the “queen” is apparently in Nice at the market – Therese. I couldn’t handle her haughty attitude or the line, so we didn’t get a chance to taste, but we did get to see her verbally abuse some customers – who took it, I suppose as a testament to how good her socca cakes were. In any event, they’re made with chickpea flour, so they have a different flavor, and a golden color. They’re pretty addictive. These, along with the pan bagnat, and the Nicoise salad, are the local indigenous foods.

 

 

So after walking quite a bit and getting thrown around on the beach in the waves, then hurting our feet on the pebbles, and making four or five trips into the fiery inferno where we parked our car, (four levels below the Place Massena), we went for a fancy dinner at La Reserve, which is around on the other side of the port. That meant we could drive and likely park there (plenty of spots) so we wouldn’t have to go back into the dungeon for the car after dinner.

The restaurant has been there for some time, but they have a new chef recently, and his other restaurant in Nice has a Michelin star. So we figured we should do OK. We did.

 

 

This place was pretty expensive, but when you eat at this kind of place, you end up with a lot you don’t expect. We started with an amuse (eggplant stuffed with ricotta) and then breadsticks and bread, each served separately. Then we were served local vegetables lightly boiled and then served in a cold, watery pistou. That was very refreshing – even the kids were happy about it. We had our appetizers, and Christina and I had nouvelle pan bagnats. These were definitely a step up from the ones in town for 4€ (not that those aren’t good, too). But the ingredients were just delectable and the tuna was fresh and seared and the olive oil was fruity and the flavors together were great. 

After we were served the entrees, we discovered that of the four menus we had used to order, only one had prices: mine. Christina had no idea was the meal cost. That was pretty old-school. It’s been so long since I’ve seen that that when I last saw it, I didn’t have the one with prices.

Anyway, the meal proceeded through the cheese (reblochon, chevre, brillat-savarin, and roquefort), the pre-dessert (berry sorbet with fresh berries and fraise de bois), the desserts (actually, probably the least memorable course) and then the coffee and the little extra truffles and fruit jellies and macarons. Turns out they also have good WiFi.

More about Fayence

OK – so those are the big trips we took outside of Fayence. But staying in Fayence (which we did for several days) is really pretty wonderful. The town is about 1000 feet up, and just less than an hour from Nice, north of the A8. Our house, very generously lent to us by a friend of Christina’s, was a very short walk from the commercial area of the town – essentially the old town, a typical medieval hill town. The town has a bell tower (that seems to compete with the bell in the church, the church typically sounding the hour and the half hour about 10 seconds before the belltower), remnants of old walls, and a nice square for the market that occurs Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. The market has several different vendors, some of whom I’ve only seen once, while others come each time. The socca cakes, as mentioned above, are addictive. At Chez Regis, Regis can tell you who the family is that makes each cheese, and how long each individual crottin has been aged, and where and how long each ham has been smoked. He promised us the best roquefort that we’d ever have, and, two days later, he had it, and it was creamy, salty, tangy, and marvelous. All of the vendors at the market are extremely friendly – sometimes even flamboyant – and they take all the time they need with each customer. Sometimes, this drove me nuts, as when you aren’t the customer being lavished with time, you’re waiting for that customer to be finished. I know that’s just the way it is here and I could be more patient, but I’m sure I would have patronized more vendors if some transactions were completed a little more quickly. We spent a long time tasting cheeses and meats in Regis’ shop, just a bit up the hill, and the kids were about to expire by the time it was over. I kept saying, “fine, we’ll take X amount.” And Regis would say, “but you must taste it first, and compare it to the other.” It really was a very generous attitude, both of his time and his product.

 

 

 

So the town also has a bakery, a butcher, a small grocery store, a wine cave, several local products stores, and many restaurants. I’m surprised to say that there are more restaurants here than we’ll get to. In the old part of town with windy lanes with steps, each time you turn a corner thinking it’s all residential, you find more artisans or restaurants. 

 

 

We actually ate several lunches and one dinner at home with products from the local stores and the market, but the restaurants have really been pretty exceptional also. We ate at La Farigoulette one night, and enjoyed it quite a bit. That restaurant seems to get some press – it’s closest to the back street where our house was, and we couldn’t get in the first night without reservations. Christina and I both had types of fish that we’d never heard of before. We left knowing that we’d happily return, if we had time.

Another night we ate at Restaurant La France which is just above the main street at the main crossroads – or crosswalk, really: the main cross street is really a slow stairway in each direction. The meat that Leo (lamb) and I (beef) had here was truly amazing. His was roasted with thyme, and mine with mushrooms and brown butter. Another slam dunk, all the way through.

The creperie made for a nice snack one day – nothing too unusual, but solid. 

The cafe right in the heart of town (Bistrot Fayencois) on both sides of the main road was really pretty ordinary, and, even though they promised WiFi, that was only intermittent. I will say that what was kind of interesting about this place was that the restaurant itself is on one side of the main road, and their outdoor eating area is on the other. So the waitstaff is constantly crossing through traffic with food and dirty plates. It seems crazy, but we saw it repeated in other places. But don’t go for the food – it’s really the right place for a drink only.

The one feature that the town seemed to lack was good WiFi. But I finally found it! At the Espace Culturel – the cultural center and movie theater – there’s good, free WiFi. I couldn’t use VoIP with it, but for browsing and email, it was rock solid. Only problem is, you need to be down at the level of the theater doors to go get to it, and they often seem to lock the plaza sometimes so you can’t get the WiFi. But when you can, it’s good.

One night we ate at Le Canotier, which is still in the old part of town, but much lower down, where the main road switches back. It’s a quick, steep walk, and the pizza and salads were very good. Even better, the service was wonderfully friendly and the staff really seemed to enjoy their jobs and the evening.

On our last day, we drove over to Callians just to catch a glimpse of another hill town. This one is a bit smaller than Fayence, but it basically has the same idea: dense, old section, anchored by a church and a clock/watch tower. Bells ring every hour (and a single bell on the half hour). And here, we had an amazing lunch, at an Italian restaurant called Rendez-vous. They brine their own olives in-house (we got a jar to take home) and they pretty much fired on all cylinders, including dessert. The setting couldn’t be prettier, on a patio overlooking the hills in the distance. I had a plate of local cooked/roasted/prepared vegetables with some cheese and meats, and Leo had a great steak tartare. Maya’s tomato and mozzarella salad had some crazy heirlooms on it, and Christina’s rocket and parmesan had probably the best green leaves we’d tasted all trip. Great quick day trip (10 minutes away) and a great lunch.

 

 

 

Our last night in Fayence we ate at Les Temps du Cerises, which is apparently the name of a song by Henry Mancini. This place had a bit more of an international fusion menu, but still pretty French compared with the fusion you’d find in LA. We’d had the local vin du pays which I kept seeing in the farmer’s market: Val d’Iris. I’m getting a little liking of French wines, and this one seemed pretty solid. Leo had, yet again, a great steak, and I had lamb with Asian spices. But the best part was the dessert. I got a sampler plate of all six desserts, including a sour and tangy berry soup, and a creme brulee that had a nice but slight burned flavor on top.

 

So from there, all that remained was for us to pack all of our bags, slice up some baguettes to make sandwiches for the plane, and head to the Nice airport. Great trip.