Eating Up My Guidebook Research Duties in Provence

Researching my guidebooks in France comes with very good eating. Each night my co-author Steve Smith and I blitz the town’s restaurant scene (often with a local food expert in tow) — checking atmospheric squares, visiting places already in our book, and checking in on highly recommended new places. Then comes our little reward: At about 9:45 or 10:00, we sit down to eat at our favorite of all the places we visited. This is some of the most rewarding work for our guidebook…and enjoyable, too!

This photo typifies the scene in so many towns throughout Europe: a young, creative restaurateur serving fun and tasty local dishes for €10 to €15 each. I love the ritual of bringing over the big blackboard. These days, you’ll often find two versions — one in French and one in English.

All over Europe, food tours are trendy. I take many of them in hopes of finding ones to recommend in our guidebooks, and also to learn fun new angles on the local food scene. Some tours are too slow and expensive. Others are fast-paced and reasonably priced. Steve and I enjoyed a morning food tour with Avignon food guide Aurelie, which had the bonus of a small group size. (A nice thing about food tours is that, because they’re squeezing into small shops and restaurants, they max out at only eight or ten people and can depart with as few as three — the size of our group on this morning.) Here’s how I wrote up the tour for our guidebook:

The Avignon Gourmet Walking Tour is a wonderful experience if you like to eat. Charming and passionate Aurelie meets small groups daily (except Sun and Mon) at the TI at 9:15 for a well-designed, three-hour, eight-stop walk. Her tour is filled with information and tastes of top-quality local foods and drinks, and finishes in the market hall (€55, 2-8 people per group, book in advance on her website, www.avignongourmetours.com).

Well-preserved medieval quarters of towns in the South of France all have charming squares filled with charming restaurants. These days, a place with no outdoor seating might as well not open on a hot night, when everyone wants to eat outdoors. Many places have two zones — inside and outside — and only open one or the other each evening.

Out and about with a healthy appetite, it’s hard to know which delightful scene to sit down and eat in. Aix-en-Provence may not have any blockbuster sights, but its old center offers a postcard square around every corner.