Sète restaurant: L’Entonnoir
The market, Halles de Sète, is well worth a morning and lunch too, there are some excellent restaurants within. Recommended by Trish Deseine, who has a house nearby, we ate at L’entonnoir which offers fresh Mediterranean food with an Asian twist, cooked by a talented female chef (pictures below).
It looks like half of Sète goes there to drink, socialise and eat after shopping. This is a market that you dress up for, that you do your makeup for. It’s a market where you will be seen. People-watching yields good material.
Sètois specialities
Tièlles are seafood pies or empanadas. La maison Tianni Marcos, a stall in the market, has queues waiting for these spicy little pasties. Italian immigrants brought these to Sète at the end of the 19th century, the Italian influence can be seen in the olive oil pastry. Inside you have a thick octopus stew cooked in tomato, fennel and spices.
Soupe de poisson à la Sètoise and Bourride à la Sètoise: further east along the coast Marseilles has a famous fish soup, with croutons and a red sauce ‘rouille’ and this soup or thick stew (bourride) is quite similar.
Olives Setoises: I bought these green olives which were marinated in a creamy tomato and white wine sauce. Absolutely delicious. ‘A la Sètoise’ appears generally to mean cooked in tomato, saffron, provencale herbs, garlic and wine.
Zezette de Sète: a kind of sweet biscuit, flavoured with orange flower water
Here are some pictures I took in the market. I love the one of the guy who has travelled from his little vineyard that morning, selling home-grown wine from big plastic flagons. You bring along your plastic coke bottle and he will fill it with Vin de Pays.
Some of the stallholders still had their ‘Je suis Charlie’ posters on the wall. One guy, holding the cherries below, had a large portrait of Georges Brassens behind him.
I love this part of France and the squid pies are one of my favourite French local specialities. The local dish seche a la rouille is wonderful too – so tender, far from the rubbery stuff you get here!
Me too I love it. From Carcassonne to Sete and to the Spanish border. The food was so good.
what beautiful photos! I lover farmer's markets and really miss the beautfiul ones of Leipzig in the market square twice a week
Thanks Cate, I love markets too. So many characters, I love the social aspect as well.
The flavours sound so vivid. Another place on food led travel bucket list. If it makes you feel any better I watched a two year go under the water in the swimming pool and alerted the lifeguard. The French mother had left he daughter in the pool with no armbands and went off to get a camera. Perfect parenting no such thing