Get the full flavor of France’s second-largest city though its favorite street food, whether it’s topped with raw garlic, sweet Corsican sausage, Emmental cheese or anchovies.
On a balmy night in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, crowds move through the graffiti-toned streets of the central Cours Julien neighborhood. Buildings are splashed in color as if the nearby Mediterranean had washed up, ebbed out and left behind pigments of a shattered rainbow.
It’s almost midnight. The square is still buzzing with people cracking jokes and taking swigs of pastis. Restaurants are mostly closed, but a warm glow beckons from open counters, where the scent of tomato sauce, cheese and dough wafts through the air.
“Here, the late-night food isn’t really kebabs or crepes,” my Marseille-native friend Simon told me when I moved to the city just over a year ago. “It’s pizza.”
Marseille pizza has a harder crust than the soft Neapolitan style. It’s typically made with Emmental cheese instead of mozzarella. Some say this is simply because Emmental was traditionally more readily available; others swear it’s saltier and richer. Pizza makers frequently swap Provençal marjoram for oregano; sometimes they sprinkle raw garlic on top.
The classic Marseille slice is the moitié-moitié (half-half), a tomato-based pie with anchovies on one side and cheese on the other. The Armenian has minced beef, onions and peppers. Sweet figatelli sausage and brousse cheese, which is similar to ricotta, top the Corsican slice. Halal pizza is available in Noailles, a neighborhood near the port.
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