We were hours away from lunch, and before that we had to see the nonedible side of the market, the brocanteurs with their magpie collections of bits and pieces of domestic history rescued from attics all over Provence. Isle-sur-la-Sorgue has been an antique dealers' town for years; there is a huge warehouse by the station where thirty or forty dealers have permanent pitches, and where you can find almost anything except a bargain. But it was too sunny a morning to spend in the gloom of a warehouse, and we stayed among the outside stalls under the plane trees where the purveyors of what they like to call haut bric-à-brac spread their offerings on tables and chairs or on the ground, or hung them from nails in the tree trunks.
Faded sepia postcards and old linen smocks were jumbled up with fistfuls of cutlery, chipped enamel signs advertising purgatives and pomade for unruly mustaches, fire irons and chamber pots, Art Deco brooches and café ashtrays, yellowing books of poetry and the inevitable Louis Quatorze chair, perfect except for a missing leg. As it got closer to noon the prices went down and haggling began in earnest. This was the moment for my wife, who is close to professional standard at haggling, to strike. She had been circling a small plaster bust of Delacroix. The dealer marked it down to seventy-five francs, and she moved in for the kill.
"What's your best price?" she asked the dealer.
"My best price, Madame, is a hundred francs. However, this now seems unlikely, and lunch approaches. You can have it for fifty."
We put Delacroix in the car, where he gazed thoughtfully out of the back window, and we joined the rest of France as the entire country prepared itself for the pleasures of the table.
One of the characteristics which we liked and even admired about the French is their willingness to support good cooking, no matter how remote the kitchen may be. The quality of the food is more important than convenience, and they will happily drive for an hour or more, salivating en route, in order to eat well. This makes it possible for a gifted cook to prosper in what might appear to be the most unpromising of locations, and the restaurant we had chosen was so isolated that on our first visit we'd taken a map.
Buoux is barely large enough to be called a village. Hidden in the hills about ten miles from Bonnieux, it has an ancient Mairie, a modern telephone kiosk, fifteen or twenty scattered houses, and the Auberge de la Loube, built into the side of the hill with an empty, beautiful valley below it. We had found it with some difficulty in the winter, doubting the map as we went deeper and deeper into the wilderness. We had been the only clients that night, eating in front of a huge log fire while the wind rattled the shutters.
There could hardly have been a greater contrast between that raw night and a hot Sunday in May. As we came around the bend in the road leading to the restaurant we saw that the small parking area was already full, half of it taken up by three horses tethered to the bumper of a decrepit Citroen. The restaurant cat sprawled on the warm roof tiles, looking speculatively at some chickens in the next field. Tables and chairs were arranged along the length of an open-fronted barn, and we could hear the ice buckets being filled in the kitchen.
Maurice the chef came out with four glasses of peach champagne, and took us over to see his latest investment. It was an old open carriage with wooden wheels and cracked leather seats, large enough for half a dozen passengers. Maurice was planning to organize horse-drawn coach excursions through the Lubéron, stopping, bien sûr, for a good lunch on the way. Did we think it was an amusing idea? Would we come? Of course we would. He gave us a pleased, shy smile and went back to his ovens.
He had taught himself to cook, but he had no desire to become the Bocuse of Buoux. All he wanted was enough business to allow him to stay in his valley with his horses. The success of his restaurant was based on value for money and good, simple food rather than flights of gastronomic fancy, which he called cuisine snob.
There was one menu, at 110 francs. The young girl who serves on Sundays brought out a flat basketwork tray and put it in the middle of the table. We counted fourteen separate hors d'oeuvres-artichoke hearts, tiny sardines fried in batter, perfumed tabouleh, creamed salt cod, marinated mushrooms, baby calamari, tapenade, small onions in a fresh tomato sauce, celery and chick-peas, radishes and cherry tomatoes, cold mussels. Balanced on the top of the loaded tray were thick slices of pâté and gherkins, saucers of olives and cold peppers. The bread had a fine crisp crust. There was white wine in the ice bucket, and a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape left to breathe in the shade.
The other customers were all French, people from the neighboring villages dressed in their clean, somber Sunday clothes, and one or two more sophisticated couples looking fashionably out of place in their bright boutique colors. At a big table in the corner, three generations of a family piled their plates high and wished each other bon appétit. One of the children, showing remarkable promise for a six-year-old gourmet, said that he preferred this pâté to the one he ate at home, and asked his grandmother for a taste of her wine. The family dog waited patiently by his side, knowing as all dogs do that children drop more food than adults.
The main course arrived-rosy slices of lamb cooked with whole cloves of garlic, young green beans, and a golden potato-and-onion galette. The Châteauneuf-du-Pape was poured, dark and heady, "a wine with shoulders," as Maurice had said. We abandoned plans for an active afternoon, and drew lots to see who would get Bernard's floating armchair.
The cheese was from Banon, moist in its wrapping of vine leaves, and then came the triple flavors and textures of the desserts-lemon sorbet, chocolate tart, and crème anglaise all sharing a plate. Coffee. A glass of marc from Gigondas. A sigh of contentment. Where else in the world, our friends wondered, could you eat so well in such unfussy and relaxed surroundings? Italy, perhaps, but very few other places. They were used to London, with its overdecorated restaurants, its theme food, and its grotesque prices. They told us about a bowl of pasta in Mayfair that cost more than the entire meal each of us had just had. Why was it so difficult to eat well and cheaply in London? Full of easy after-lunch wisdom, we came to the conclusion that the English eat out less often than the French, and when they do they want to be impressed as well as fed; they want bottles of wine in baskets, and finger bowls, and menus the length of a short novel, and bills they can boast about.
Maurice came over and asked if his cooking had pleased us. He sat down while he did some addition on a scrap of paper. "La douloureuse," he said, pushing it over the table. It came to just over 650 francs, or about what two people would pay for a smart lunch in Fulham. One of our friends asked him if he'd ever thought of moving somewhere more accessible, like Avignon or even Ménerbes. He shook his head. "It's good here. I have everything I want." He could see himself there and cooking in twenty-five years' time, and we hoped we would still be in a fit state to totter up and enjoy it.
On the way home, we noticed that the combination of food and Sunday has a calming influence on the French motorist. His stomach is full. He is on his weekly holiday. He dawdles along without being tempted by the thrills of overtaking on a blind bend. He stops to take the air and relieve himself in the bushes by the roadside, at one with nature, nodding companionably at passing cars. Tomorrow he will take up the mantle of the kamikaze pilot once again, but today it is Sunday in Provence, and life is to be enjoyed.