Bouillabaisse at Restaurant Chez Michel, Marseille

We came to Marseille on a mission for bouillabaisse.

It’s the famous dish that Marseille, the Mediterranean port city, is known for – made with the freshest fish pulled straight from the sea.

To work up an appetite, we walked down from the train station to the Vieux Port (the old port, now filled only with sailboats and fishing boats instead of container ships).

After browsing all up and down the touristy market on one side of the port (I bought some navettes, orange flower water-scented cookies, which smelled lovely but ended up tasting like elegant soap), we came to the small fish market.

Fishing boats pull right up to the edge of the water, unloading all sorts of fish that I’ve never seen before, and tourists mix with locals to get a good view of the catch.

Next we started the long walk towards the restaurant, stopping to climb up to the top of Fort Saint-Nicolas.  The reward for the ascent is a sweeping view of the city below.

The sun was high in the sky, so we were grateful to step into the coolness of Restaurant Chez Michel.  It’s situated on the Plage des Catalans, facing the Mediterranean with a view of cruise ship-sized Algerian ferries and the Chateau d’If (a setting for the Count of Monte Cristo).

Immediately inside the door, there’s a display of the fish that will become part of the bouillabaisse, and behind it, a wall of photos of some of the celebrities who have been to the restaurant (everyone from Brigitte Bardot to Gina Lollobrigida to Pablo Picasso).

We were seated at a table in the front of the restaurant, next to a window looking out to the beach and the sea beyond.  After pastis to start, we ordered a bottle of rosé and prepared for the main attraction.

We were shown a platter of fresh fish (selected from those baskets up front) and they were whisked off to the kitchen.  After a bit, the maître d’ and two waiters appeared with a silver soup terrine and the cooked fish.

Traditional bouillabaisse is not actually a fish stew, but rather a richly flavored tomato-and-fish-stock soup presented with the filleted fish alongside.  At Chez Michel, they also serve some sliced potatoes that have been cooked in the soup so that they take on the same beautiful color and flavor.

Here’s the carefully choreographed plating ritual:

And here’s my finished plate, with four kinds of fish surrounding the potatoes.

Along with the soup, we also had a platter of toasted bread and croutons, plus aïoli (garlicky mayonnaise) and rouille (a rust-colored saffron mayonnaise).

The idea of bouillabaisse, the maitre d’ explained, is to mix and mingle all these components so you taste all the flavors at once – the soup, the fish, the aïoli, the rouille.

I diligently set to work: spreading the croutons with the aïoli and rouille and submerging them in the soup, and then dipping bits of fish and potato in too.  It’s amazing how the different pieces, all so flavorful on their own, come together.  Everyone else was busily eating too, pausing only when one of the waiters appeared to ladle more soup into our bowls.

It was all delicious, and we ate so much that none of us had dinner that night.  Definitely a true Marseillaise experience, and a real treat!