Dipping our toes in the Med

"Look where we are!" I said, as we sat in a small seafood restaurant, La Poissonerie Laurent, beside the fishing boats in the port of Cassis. Across the small boat harbour we looked at the massive cliffs above the town, crowned by the Chateau, and the moon nearly full above it all. We were having a discussion about how we are quite blase, these days, about exotic locations. "We're unimpressable", said Sandy. I agreed to a point. Earlier in the day we took a boat trip to Les Calanques, which are huge, white cliffs which jut in finger-like points out into the blue, blue sea of the Mediterannean. They're quite spectacular and clearly popular with walkers and climbers. I gather from what I have read that the calanques are a very delicate ecosystem which have really been damaged over the years by humans; so these days visiting on foot and by car are really restricted; you're not even allowed to walk in there before the second week of September. Anyway we thought it was beautiful and certainly unique scenery. But compared to the Marlborough Sounds...... hmm. We took a trip earlier this year, on a perfect February morning - admittedly it was organised exclusively for me by a PR company - to a salmon farm tucked away in the Sounds, and frankly that was mind-blowing. But how can you compare the South Island of New Zealand with the south of France? I think it's OK to be unimpressable, so long as we're still capable of taking pleasure from new places. Which we definitely are. We had a lot of pleasure this evening, for example.

We had eaten at La Poissonerie Laurent yesterday for lunch, and it was very, very good. Fresh, fresh fish and nice people and a prime location on the port at Cassis. We'd chosen it on gut instinct: it had a nice feeling about it; I liked that there was an open kitchen, which you don't see much here, and that they sold fresh fish on site, so they clearly had a focus on that. Sandy liked that it looked prosperous; there were new, snappy awnings and umbrellas. As it turns out we were bang-on and found when we got home that the place has been written up in both the Michelin guide and Olive magazine. So we were not discovering a hidden gem, but our restaurant radar is good. We decided to book for dinner and commit to the real deal: bouillabaisse.

Bouillabaisse is one of those classic dishes, like pavlova, which everyone claims to have invented, and for which everyone claims to know the authentic recipe. From my reading I've learned it originated in Marseille; it always or sometimes contains scorpion fish, and it is served as two courses or one course, depending on who you believe. I was expecting to get the soupy broth first with the bread and rouille (the garlicky, spicy, potato-thckened mayonnaise) and then the fish as a second course. But at La Poissonerie we were given the bread and rouille, the broth in a large tureen, and a plate of fish each. "I will now explain," said our waiter (in French) "how to eat the bouillabaisse". He instructed us quite strictly, but in a friendly way (he and I had already bonded) that we should spread the rouille on the bread, then place the bread in the empty bowl before us. Then, checking that there were no bones anywhere, place small pieces of fish in the bowl, and cover with the soup. But "very important!": we should not let the soup get too cold. If it started to cool down, we should call him over immediately to re-heat and refresh the bowl. Right.

I have made bouillabaisse quite a few times over the years. I make rouille and my soup is pretty good, I think: saffron, garlic, tomatoes, wine, etc. But I have always bunged everything in one bowl and put the croutons on the top. This, on location as it were, was much more interesting and very, very finely flavoured. We did have our man refresh our broth a couple of times, but at the end I wanted to taste it cooler, so I could get the delicate flavours. There was superbly fresh fish and shellfish in our bouillabaisse. But it is the broth which makes a soup like this, and there's no faking it. It's like the dashi in Japanese cooking. You could taste the excellent, fresh, home-cooked fish stock at the base of this soup. It was enhanced and coloured with subtle saffron and spiked with garlic, but at its heart there was an excellent, true, hearty base. Mmmm. I couldn't stop slurping it up. Delicieuse. Paired with a really very good local Cassis wine (they make fabulous whites around here) it was the perfect last meal, probably, of our stay in France.

We didn't feel like quite leaving it at that, so we asked (well, I asked, since he did not speak English) our waiter what the best dessert was on the menu. He said the chocolate gateaux, but when I wavered, suggested the creme caramel. A couple of glasses of muscat later, we were replete.

A funny thing did happen after dinner. In French restaurants once you say you don't want un cafe (which let's face it, who does? Coffee at 9.30 at night?) you are presented with the bill. But if you are lushes like us who feel like lingering, you throw out the system. Anyway I ordered another glass of muscat for me and a glass of white wine for Sandy. Mine was just fine but his - mon dieu! - it was undrinkable.

I'm surprised, given the French have not yet embraced the screwcap for wine as have the innovative winemakers of New Zealand - that this is the first time we have had to send wine back in France. But I was forced to. Not knowing the French word for "corked" didn't matter; my face probably said it all. In any case, this was clearly wine from a cask. I know our friendly waiter did not really believe me. But he took the wine away, back to the kitchen. I watched as another waiter took a sniff, made a face, and immediately strode to the fridge and tossed the cask into the bin! Yep, it was really bad. They were nice about it though and didn't charge for the extra glass of muscat we ordered as a replacement.

I talked to my sister Shelly this morning (her evening in Melbourne) since it was her birthday. I explained that I was sitting on our balcony, looking over the Mediterrannean, watching the massive red cliffs of Cassis change colour in the morning light, having just eaten my pain au chocolat for breakfast. "Oh my god," she said, "It sounds so exotic. I can't beleive you're on the other side of the world." "I know," I said. "I can hardly believe it myself".

More photos from Cassis