Auberge La Fenière

Welcome to Nadia Sammut and Ernest Hung Do’s estate: seven heavenly hectares filled with olive trees, cypresses and fruit trees, where you’ll find a hotel, an épicerie and a restaurant serving gluten-free Mediterranean cuisine! The daughter of Reine and the former chef at Simple Sushi in Marseille prepare some sensational fare on their €150 tasting menu: an incredible vegetable plate combining stem-to-root carrots, a bundle of haricots verts and fennel, with a delicate melet dip (a sort of anchoiade made from juvenile fish marinated with fennel and pepper) and a chickpea galette topped with almond cream, miso and purple shiso; incredible sashimi prepared with fish from Marseille (Atlantic bonito, tuna, mackerel), brushed with a magnificent citrus oil from the Domaine du Jasson; a salad of oak leaf lettuce, Rougettelettuce, sea bean, purslane and mussels from Pascal Migliore, titillated by an intense homemade vinaigrette; sublime seared mullet with a jalapeño oil, bottarga cream and shaved bottarga; radiant whole oven-roasted eggplant dressed with a dashi broth, and topped with a eggplant-coffee cream and homemade dukkah; a magical couscous composed of saffrony cassava grains, flame-charred peppers, flash-seared wolfish fillet and a mullet fish ball, all plunged into an ultra-condensed rockfish soup spiced with ras el-hanout; before a delicious candied melon with an ultra-silky aqaufaba, vanilla and olive oil ice cream for dessert, followed by a peach poached in verbena syrup with sumac-roasted apricots, an olive oil cream, almonds, verbena, fresh blackberries and a carrot reduction, a true feat of the imagination! // G.LeP.

FEELING THIRSTY? There’s a naturalist wine list that sweeps across France: a Luberon white from the Domaine de MasLauris (€10 a glass), a Rhone white from the Domaine Gramenon (€60 a bottle), a Jura Melon from the Domaine de la Pinte (€90), a Saumur white from the Domaine Guiberteau (€110).

PRICE: Menus €98 and €150.