Provincial vs Provencal
I've just got back from a week in a villa in rural Provence and was reflecting on the curious inversion of the relationship between countryside and city that we experience here in the UK. City dwellers in England are apt to look down on those who live in the "sticks" and who are therefore denied the delights of culture and gastronomy afforded by the British metropolis. This goes at least double for London of course where the sticks begin anywhere outside zone 3 of the Underground.
In Provence the situation is perfectly reversed. All the rich and clever people live in the villages and regard the cities, Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez as crass and dull, crowded with tourists and tawdry celebs. Meanwhile, every village has a noticeboard advertising piano recitals by world reknown musicians, cutting-edge theatre productions and art exhibitions. And every village has its restaurants - stylish, abundantly decorated with Michelin stars and serving the best locally produced food and wine.
We stayed in a villa close to a tiny hilltop village and shopped at one local supermarket for our provisions. I counted nine different varieties of creme fraiche and thirteen different kinds of butter. The fish counter was 30 feet long and at the end of it they had a tank full of live lobsters. The cheese counter was positively stupefying - one third famous cheeses, one third that I had never heard of and a final third that nobody has ever heard of. The wines were mainly locally produced - you could see one of the vineyards from the supermarket carpark and this was a "Super U", a big national chain like Sainsbury's.
Compare this to the dire situation to be found in our rural villages or even many of our cities come to that. The Spar shop with its tinned frankfurters and flabby white buns, the Post Office with four-day-old pork pies and two kinds of cheddar cheese in plastic wraps. Then of course there is the village pub (if you are lucky) and its microwave dinners with oven chips. Ugh, where did it all go wrong?
In Provence the situation is perfectly reversed. All the rich and clever people live in the villages and regard the cities, Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez as crass and dull, crowded with tourists and tawdry celebs. Meanwhile, every village has a noticeboard advertising piano recitals by world reknown musicians, cutting-edge theatre productions and art exhibitions. And every village has its restaurants - stylish, abundantly decorated with Michelin stars and serving the best locally produced food and wine.
We stayed in a villa close to a tiny hilltop village and shopped at one local supermarket for our provisions. I counted nine different varieties of creme fraiche and thirteen different kinds of butter. The fish counter was 30 feet long and at the end of it they had a tank full of live lobsters. The cheese counter was positively stupefying - one third famous cheeses, one third that I had never heard of and a final third that nobody has ever heard of. The wines were mainly locally produced - you could see one of the vineyards from the supermarket carpark and this was a "Super U", a big national chain like Sainsbury's.
Compare this to the dire situation to be found in our rural villages or even many of our cities come to that. The Spar shop with its tinned frankfurters and flabby white buns, the Post Office with four-day-old pork pies and two kinds of cheddar cheese in plastic wraps. Then of course there is the village pub (if you are lucky) and its microwave dinners with oven chips. Ugh, where did it all go wrong?
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