A new French cookbook explores Marseille as a cultural melting pot

MARSEILLE, France — This colorful French port town exudes Mediterranean charm and chaotic energy. But Marseille, France’s oldest city, is often overlooked and misunderstood by French and foreign tourists alike.

Filmmaker and Marseille native Vérane Frédiani is looking to change that. She wants you to discover her hometown by following your stomach, and she’s written a cookbook to help you do it.

In Taste the World in Marseille, Frédiani leads readers through the ancient city’s diverse neighborhoods and layers of history, to discover Marseille’s recipes and culinary traditions.

The beautifully photographed book of recipes and rich storytelling serves equally as a guide to the city, which might explain why publisher La Martinière says the book has been one of its bestsellers.

Through conversations with chefs and anecdotes from her own childhood, Frédiani serves up a multicultural city brimming with energy, ideas and talented chefs who she says are revolutionizing French cuisine.

Frédiani's laugh and joie de vivre are infectious as she converses with NPR at an outdoor cafe in the bustling Nouailles district, known as the “belly of Marseille.”

Here, outdoor markets trade in vegetables and spices more often seen in Africa and Asia, but increasingly used in restaurants across this port town. Frédiani says her book celebrates Marseille’s diversity.

“When I was a child, I always heard people saying ‘Marseille is not France,’ ” she says. “And I didn’t understand what they meant by this. It was really frustrating for me.”

Now she knows that the city’s multicultural DNA is also its allure. Marseille has been a melting pot of cultures since it was founded by the Greeks 2,500 years ago.

Frédiani's own family has roots in Italy and Tunisia. She says Marseille is different from other French towns.

“You don’t have to be in Marseille for generations to call yourself a Marseillais,” she explains. “Coming from somewhere else is common. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everybody is Marseillais within five minutes. The moment you arrive here and you like it here, you are Marseillais.”

A melting pot of flavors

One of the chefs profiled in her book is Hugues Mbenda, a 35-year-old French Congolese chef who opened his restaurant in Marseille five years ago. The restaurant is known by two names — and identities: Libala by day, and Kin by night, with different decor and menus for each.

Before embarking on his own, Mbenda worked in Michelin-star establishments in Paris and London.

For Mbenda, the key to cooking is mastering the basics. “Royal hare, beef burgundy, blanquette of veal,” he says going through the classic dishes you’ve got to learn by heart. “And when you become a chef, you can mix everything."

Mbenda marries French dishes with African flavors. Chilis and mango sauce on a traditional cut of French beef. A bit of baobab mixed into a creamy Hollandaise sauce. Marseille, he says, is the perfect place to experiment.

Emilienne Malfatto for NPR

“Marseille is big, it’s the second city of France,” he says. “But it’s also like a small city because people talk together. You have the time in Marseille. In Paris, all you do is work. Work-home, work-home, work-home ….”

“It’s a sight within itself”

Mbenda’s is just one of many wonderful chef stories in Frédiani’s cookbook.

The newly released English edition, which adds tips designed for non-French speakers, was translated by American food writer Alexis Steinman.

Steinman admits that Marseille can be hard to understand. “You can’t visit it with a checklist of monuments, like you would Paris,” she says.

“There was a writer, Blaise Cendrars, who said Marseille is not a city of sights — it’s a site within itself,” Steinman explains. “And that’s why you have to be here, you have to walk, you have to be in the streets.”

Steinman says she was amazed by Frédiani’s book, which brings to life the people, neighborhoods and ingredients that make this chaotic and colorful Mediterranean port tick. She knew there had to be an English translation.

“I never translated anything before,” Steinman says, “but this really felt like a passion project and we wanted to share it with the world. Because Marseille has been under wraps for so long.”

Marseille will host Olympic sailing and soccer during the 2024 Summer Games. In May, the city put on a spectacular ceremony to welcome the Olympic flame that arrived in France from Greece, crossing the Mediterranean on a three-masted sailing ship.

The art of Marseillais cooking

If there is one dish for which this Mediterranean port is known, it's the iconic seafood stew, bouillabaisse.

Ironically, this stew of leftover fish parts and vegetables was traditionally a poor man‘s dish, though today it’s become a luxury in Marseille’s old port restaurants. Frédiani says most Marseillais don't eat their bouillabaisse out, they make it better at home.

Emilienne Malfatto for NPR

“Marseille today is basically still a poor city,” she says. “And we don’t want to pretend to be something else.”

Iconic U.S. chef of French cuisine, Julia Child, prepared bouillabaisse for an episode of The French Chef, broadcast on PBS.

She affectionately described the stew as having part of Marseille itself cooked right into it.

“You can somehow just taste the flavor and the color and the excitement of that old port,” Child said in a video from the 1970s. In the video, she haggles with fishmongers in the city’s fish market, plunging herself into the Marseillais food culture. Child described “Marseille’s hot noise as so different from Paris’ cool sophistication.”

Steinman says Child exemplified how Marseille opens itself up to foreigners who take an interest in the city.

“Everything is possible in Marseille”

The cookbook features many women chefs, like young Marseille native Marie Dijon, who bubbles with energy and charisma. In her restaurant Caterine, a renovated, former votive candle factory, she serves a soup made from Mediterranean green crabs and a dish of roasted leeks with a crumble of crushed dried shrimp shells.

As a child, Dijon cooked with her father and fished with her mother — catching the same green crabs in her soup of the day. She studied law in university before abruptly changing career paths to realize her dream.

Dijon believes that this is Marseille’s culinary and cultural moment.

“There is a spirit of openness and freedom,” she says. “A feeling you can do anything, anytime — gastronomically and otherwise — it’s inside us. Everything is possible in Marseille.”

Dijon cooks with top-quality local products and is committed to limiting food waste; she says she throws nothing away. Louis Schwartz, a Brit who grew up in France, is one of the cooks in her kitchen. He says he loves Marseille eating.

“It’s sort of a mix of Italian and Spanish, but it has that French style and that French rigueur that I find really interesting,” he gushes.

“But without all the butter and the cream, it’s much lighter — much less meat, much less fat, and lots of vegetables.”

A culinary institution

Couscous restaurant La Fémina opened its doors in the heart of Marseille’s Nouailles district 121 years ago. Mustapha Kachetel is the restaurant’s fourth-generation owner.

Pictures line the walls of this colorfully decorated restaurant opened by his great-great-grandfather in 1921, including one of Kachetel with the late U.S. chef and food travel TV host Anthony Bourdain, who ate at La Fémina. Kachetel says Bourdain loved the barley couscous, which is emblematic of the Kabylie region of northern Algeria, where his family is from.

Kachetel’s couscous is based on his great, great grandmother’s recipe, which he gave to Frédiani for her book.

Frédiani says couscous is as much a favorite here as bouillabaisse — perhaps even more so, because it’s cheaper.

Every September Marseille holds a couscous festival, and hundreds of long tables are set up in the street.

“We cook the entire day,” says Kechetel, you must come back for it. Tell Americans it’s a great time to visit.”

Frédiani says the people of Marseille are eager to tell you about their food and their city. All you need is a little curiosity, time to explore and a good appetite.