A Meal in the Maures

The silence at Chartreuse de la Verne had emptied all, including even our bellies.  We found respite a dozen twisted kilometers away, in the village of Collobrières.  There had been a settlement here at least since the bridge was laid in the 12th Century.  The town's current layout was like a bell jar, with long narrow streets leading away toward a central point from which they splayed away like the typical medieval town.  The base of this bell was the long Boulevard Lazare Carnol, shaded completely by tall plane trees.  We sat ourselves in front of the Bar Tabac de la Mairie, facing the village square, which was as quiet as the ruined church that had greeted us on our way into town.  The proprietress upon seeing us seemed surprised that we didn't prefer to eat overlooking the river.  The river?

Passing through to the back, we found a wide veranda had been built across the narrow Réal Collobrier, a number of its tables filled with food and conversation.  We settled into a bowl of linguine and a nice piece of beef, along with the obligatory glass of rosé.  This is a dangerous sort of wine, as unlike a fuller-bodied white (or red, though in the summer, forget it), it is barely felt and goes down like water, and before you know it, a half bottle is gone.  Being midday, and needing to drive those sinuous roads home, I chose the smallest volume. 

We had started late, and not long after our plates arrived, so did the staff, tucking into a tall plate of mussels now that the kitchen was closed.  A jolly, full-bellied man stepped out into the doorway, who we presumed was the cook. He called greetings over to a man at an adjoining veranda, one filled with diners looking more buttoned down and touristic.  LYL and I complimented ourselves on choosing the one that was more authentic, where the other guests looked like locals.  When our proprietress came to drop our check we complimented the food, and asked her to pass on these sentiments to the chef.  She looked at us and laughed and said, "But that's me!"  The full-bellied 'cook' smiled at us from behind her, still playing the charade that it was he rather, who was in charge.  

After such a good meal, the level of satisfaction is usually so complete that there is really little point in trying to surpass it.  Aside from the drive home, there was little else to do.  We had a token peek at the Chapelle Notre Dame de Pitié, as bright and colorfully painted as the shutters in the windows of the houses lining the long lanes.  Next door at Confiserie Azuréenne we took as dessert some samples of the chestnuts that gives this village its renown. (Though their ice cream seemed a bigger seller on a day as hot as this.)   Followed up by a cafe au lait on the village square, in a bistro whose platters were as big as the rims on our car. Little moved here, least of all the air, so we initiated a bit of motion ourselves, and walked across the dappling shadows of the plane trees, in the direction of a nap.  


On the turntable: Bill Evans, "Live at the Village Vanguard"