Market Forces

Narbonne

I’m spending a few glorious days in the Languedoc... I know... the absurd privileges of the job… and yesterday I found myself in Narbonne

And no, before you ask, not Les Grands Buffets - the legendary all-you-can-eat-Escoffier gastrobarn. I want to go so badly it hurts, but I can’t do it alone. It’s a job that requires a crack team of committed sybarites and, unfortunately, I don’t roll with that sort of entourage.

Les Halles de Narbonne, though, is more than adequate for my modest needs. Every second year, this covered produce market wins some sort of florid gong or sash for being the meillieur marché de France, only to be supplanted the next year by the market in nearby Sète. Sounds like a deeply dubious stitch up if you ask me, but if you’re the kind of person who knows that you eat best in a market, you’re going to have to find an excuse to get down to this corner of France.

I am precisely the kind of person who knows that you eat best in a market.

As our latest ‘BREXIT Bonus’ is the inability to bring anything of interest back through UK customs, I can’t really do any shopping. I could take loads of market photos and pout at the camera a bit, but honestly, I felt a lot better plonking down at the Bar Central and having the meat-and-chips.

This is chalked on a blackboard and reads, year in, year out...

Magret de canard

Chorizo

Onglet

Foie de veau

Rognons

Tripe

Jambon

Boudin

Andouillette

…plus a ‘Special’ which today was cœurs de canard

The market has half a dozen meat stalls of gratifying variety. There’s one that seems to specialise in offal, a tempting poultry specialist, one that does horsemeat, and one run by a retired rugby player with an excellent gimmick. If you order a steak or chop at the cafe on the opposite side of the aisle, they yell your order across, he wraps the meat in paper and then hurls it spinning through the air to be caught by the grill man.

I only get down here once every year and I’ve got as far down the list as the rognons.

Sauce moutarde has been my preference hitherto but that’s not how the Central is set up. It’s strictly a grill and fryer rig, so the kidneys are sliced about 8mm thick and lashed on the griddle so the outsides crisp but the insides stay bang-on-the-button rosé. These things are tiny. No more than 25mm across, which is probably why no-one has fussed to core them... and there is absolutely no need. They’re dressed in persillade, a kind of parsley/chive/chervil pesto... yes, I know you can use garlic but this is subtler.

They rush them to the table à point, concupiscently, indecently intermarried in chips. I mean, there’a big old mound of kidneys on one side, but they’re also tucked underneath and hidden inside a chip Matterhorn. You’ll notice I’m assiduously not referring to ‘fries’here. I’m troubled by “French fries”. It seems unfair to curse an entire nation for McDonald’s offering; a crisp, dry product, lightly tanned. They’ve got nothing to do with real French chips. I’m positing a theory that here they use high-quality fats, perhaps duck fat or olive oil, and therefore fry only once, at a lower temperature than us. Some might call the result soggy but actually the potato is almost confited, so the inside is soft and has developed a genuine sweetness while the outside is a deep mahogany shade. Not oily, but emphatically and proudly not crisp. Fried, French, but not French Fries.

A small but considered salad garnish, the dressing for which, alone, I’d have congratulated a Michelin chef, though this one seemed to have been mixed in a wine bottle by the waitress.

Two double espressos and a Badoit for health

My hand to God, this could be my double death row meal. It would be my last choice, then I’d have my lawyer make a last minute appeal. Delay the drop so I could have a second helping.

Which, in this case is going to take another twelvemonth, but I’m already scratching the days off on my bedroom wall.

Next Year The Tripe.