Provence Prestige is Nov 24 to 28

The 23rd annual Provence Prestige show opens Thursday November 24 at the Palais des Congrès in Arles and runs through Monday November 28. This festive holiday-theme "salon" fills a number of vast indoor expo halls with 30,000 square feet of holiday goodies, gifts, home decor, food and wine, clothes, accessories, books and much more. And it's all made in Provence by exhibitors who agree to the terms of a special ''locally made'' charter. Some 30,000 visitors and roughly 150 exhibitors are expected.

As in years past there will be Christmas workshops for kids on Saturday and Sunday, from 2 pm to 6 pm (details here). You can see a full schedule of events, background on the exhibitors and much more in the press kit.

Tickets are 6 € (adults), 3 € (ages 12 to 18 and groups of 20 or more), and free for kids under 12. 

Your ticket for Provence Prestige also entitles you to free and discounted admissions at four well-known museums--the Musée Départemental de l’Arles Antique (MDAA), the beautiful art-filled Musée Réattu, the Van Gogh Fondation and the Musee de la Camargue--as well as to all the monuments in the village.

Provence Prestige hours are from 10 am to 7 pm, with special late hours (until 11 pm) on Friday November 25, when it’s open until 11 pm. All the info is on the main website here.  

If you're heading for Arles, you might also want to visit the weekend Christmas Market (Marché de Noël des Commerçants), featuring local businesses. It's at the Chapelle Ste Anne on the Place de la Republique, in Centre Ville, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Nov 25 to 27), from 10 am to 7 pm.

A French Mega Market in Lower Manhattan

Beverly Stephen, the former executive editor of Food Arts magazine, is a journalist and consultant specializing in food, travel and lifestyle. A lifelong Francophile, Bev lives in New York but jets off to France every chance she gets. She was thrilled when this new French food hall opened recently, not far from her lower-Manhattan home...so I asked her to tell us all about it. 

Can’t make it to France his year? Pas de probleme! Francophiles on the East Coast have a great new way to get their fix at a sprawling French market in lower Manhattan called Le District.

The just-opened 30,000-square-foot Gallic fantasy, located in Brookfield Place (the former World Financial Center, recently redone at a cost of $250 million), is divided into four "districts": restaurant, café, market and garden.  Within these districts, all culinary needs for eat-in or take-out can be met, from poisson to  patisserie and fleurs to fromage. Tourists seeking a respite from the somber 9/11 Memorial Museum nearby can happily sip a rosé from Provence, take a bite of ratatouille, and feel transported to the South of France...never mind that the sweeping views are New York Harbor and not the Mediterranean. Workers from nearby Goldman Sachs and Condé Nast are likely to eat-in at one of the restaurants, at one of the counter seats scattered throughout, or on the 7,000-square-foot plaza looking out to the Statue of Liberty. Everyone can buy plenty of ingredients to make dinner back at home...along with a chic bouquet for the table from fleuriste Yasmine Karrenberg.

Dessert  comes first at Le District.  Commanding attention at the entrance is the riotously colorful French  candy store La Cure Gourmande which offers an astonishing array of nougats, caramels, biscuits and even olives au chocolat (chocolate-covered almonds in disguise), all available in gift-worthy tins. This is the first U.S. outpost of the store that originated in the Languedoc-Roussillon and now has 45 locations around the world.

Across the aisle is a crêperie, a waffle station and a patisserie displaying jewel-like French pastries. And of course a coffee bar. 

Other temptations follow—freshly baked breads, cheese, charcuterie, salads and sandwiches (I chose a delectable roasted lamb sandwich with ras al hanout and hummus white sauce), brasserie-style meals, wine and beer. Packaged foods to take home include Provencal olive oils,  Les Comtes de Provence jams, argan oil, mustards, spices, salts and sausages.  If you prefer to avoid temptation, graze before 4 p.m., when the salad bar transforms itself into a chocolate mousse bar offering eight different varieties of white and dark with toppings such as orange confit and speculoos cookies.

Le District is the brainchild of restaurant impresario Peter Poulakakos of the HPH Group, a restaurant and development company, and his business partner Paul Lamas; together they pretty much have downtown Manhattan cornered with Harry’s Café and Steak, The Dead Rabbit, The Growler and Financier Patisserie among others. They took their inspiration from Parisian markets such as La Grande Epicerie and from other countries touched by French culture such as Morocco and Vietnam. Chef Jordi Valles, an El Bulli alum, was recruited to be culinary director of the whole project. Under him is an army of chefs and cheese mongers, butchers, bakers and sausage makers.

Poulakakos himself was standing in the aisle munching on a crêpe when I stopped him to ask about his vision. “I’ve always been thrilled with French cuisine,” he said. “It’s the backbone of precision.”  As for the customers. “I want to be there for everyone. People who live and work here love it.”  Of course, he’s not oblivious to the fact that 12.4 million visitors were counted in downtown Manhattan in 2014 with more expected this year.

Little more than a decade has passed since the area suffered the devastating 9/ll attacks. And then there were the angry flood waters of Hurricane Sandy. Now FiDi (the Financial District), arguably the hottest real estate in the overheated Manhattan market, has literally risen from the ashes. 

Comparisons to Eataly--the insanely popular Italian food hall on Fifth Avenue, with 26 other outposts worldwide--seem inescapable. Le District has already been dubbed the French Eataly. But who’s complaining?  Eataly has become one of the top tourist attractions in New York City behind the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. Last year, seven million shoppers crowded its aisles while the cash registers rang up $85 million in sales. Should Le District be far behind? Mais non!

Le District at Brookfield Place
225 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
+1 212 981 8588
ledistrict.com
info@ledistrict.com

Photos:  (1) The Fromagerie at Le District features nearly 200 varieties of cheese, from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and American producers.  (2) The Pavilion is the "front door" of  Brookfield Place. The dramatic entry hall was created by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. (3) The layout. (4) Sweets from the patisserie section. (5) The dining room at Beaubourg, Le District’s flagship restaurant. (6) At the Boulangerie, at least 12 types of bread are baked fresh daily on site. (7) Catch of the day at La Poissonnerie. (8) A macaron tower in the Cafe District. (9) French mustards, jams, oils and condiments in the Market District. (9) Brookfield Place, formerly the World Financial Center, is just south of Tribeca, along the Hudson River waterfront. Originally built in 1985, the complex became Brookfield Place in 2012/2013 and is a five minute walk from the 9/11 Memorial.  (10) Click on map to enlarge. 

Photos by Jeff Thibodeau (1, 4) and Daniel Krieger (5, 6, 7, 9).

Beverly Stephen, who wrote this guest post, can be reached at bstephenwest@gmail.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

A Celebration of Food & Wine on Sept. 6

At this new event, seven top Provence restaurants and at least 13 wine and Champagne houses will be serving up some of their finest flavors in the fabulous setting of the Théâtre Antique d'Orange. The Festival des Chefs is Friday, September 6th starting at 7 pm, and tickets are 32€ per person. Roughly 700 people are expected and ticket sales will be capped at 1,000. Your list of chefs and dishes will be marked at at each station...so everyone will get to taste everything. To purchase tickets, call 06 71 32 13 72 or 06 71 32 12 81. You can also buy tickets at the participating restaurants (listed on the poster above; you can click it to enlarge) and at the Tourist Office of Orange. Or you can email amitiegourmande2013@gmail.com but you must reserve in advance. If you've never visited the Théâtre Antique, this is a great chance to experience it; it's a UNESCO World Heritage site and it's considered the best preserved Roman theater in all of Europe. See you there!

Provence Prestige is Coming Soon

Provence Prestige is a large, festive and very-popular event heralding the start of the holiday season in Provence; this year it's November 22 to 26. In two large halls of the Palais des Congrès in Arles, 150 vendors will be selling Christmas decor, holiday foods (yes, they often give samples), books, furniture, gifts, clothing, jewelry, tableware and more. Much of it is handmade and virtually all of it is local. Prices are 6€ (adults), 3€ (age 12 to 18) and free for kids under 12. (If you're in Provence, the November issue of Farandole, which you can pick up at most tourist offices,  has a coupon in it good for two free tickets.)  Your ticket also gives you discounted admission to the Musée Départemental de l’Arles Antique (the ''big blue museum'') and to the Musée Réattu during the five days of Provence Prestige. For all the info and a list of exhibitors, click here or find them on Facebook here.

Meanwhile the 2nd annual springtime Provence Prestige salon will happen at the Centre Expo Congrès in Mandelieu-La Napoule, from February 14 to 17, 2103, during the Fete du Mimosa. There the focus is also on the local and handmade--housewares, decor, food, jewelry, etc.--but without the holiday slant (duh!). That web page is here, while a list of exhibitors is here.
 

Provence Prestige Arles

November 22 to 26, 2012
Palais des Congrès d'Arles

Avenue 1ère Division Française
13200 Arles

04 90 99 08 08 

provenceprestige.com

provenceprestige@arles.cci.fr

Provence Prestige Mandelieu-La Napoule
February 14 to 17, 2013
Centre Expo Congrès de Mandelieu-La Napoule
04 93 93 64 64
provenceprestige.com
accueil@ot-mandelieu.fr   

If You Love French Chefs...

Miami will get a big taste of France this week as the South Beach Wine & Food Festival celebrates its 10^th Anniversary (Feb 24 to 27) and a slew of French chefs show up to strut their culinary stuff.

For one long weekend each February, sixty to eighty of world’s most-popular chefs drop what they’re doing to transform southern Miami Beach into the world’s largest and liveliest kitchen, providing four days of nonstop food-and-wine-drenched decadence for those lucky enough to land a ticket.

An equal number of winemakers will be on hand, pouring the crème de la crème of both old and newer vintages.

If you’re curious about current food-and-wine trends, want to see what top chefs are putting on their plates today, looking for a great party or just hungry to get away from nasty winter weather, there’s no better place to be in late February.

Or maybe you want to support the next generation of culinarians, wine experts and hoteliers-in-training? This is a pretty pleasant way to do it as every penny of festival profits benefits culinary and wine education at Florida International University. To date $11 million has been raised.

The festival also allows FIU students to work side-by-side with top chefs and wine experts, getting valuable experience which leads to great jobs. Many return as volunteers after graduation.

Maybe you’re a young chef, job-hunting or looking to move up. Maybe you’ve got a cookbook in you just waiting to bust out—if you could only meet an agent to get the ball rolling. Maybe you dream of being on TV, like Bobby, Rachael, Emeril, Paula and Jamie, all of whom will be at SoBe. Indeed for four days straight, celebrity chefs are everywhere on South Beach: cooking, eating, helping out their friends, eyeing the competition, swimming, sunning and schmoozing up a storm.

SoBe long ago eclipsed other events of its type in terms of A-list attendance, industry relevance, food and wine quality and fun factor. “Anyone who’s important is there, having the time of their life,” Wolfgang Puck says.

I’ve been to a million food-and-wine events. Not only is SoBe the largest and most successful, it’s far and away the most fun. "When it comes to SoBe, I can't find anything to complain about," Tony Bourdain told me. "And I complain about everything."

The festival is an enormous undertaking that requires 18 months of planning to pull off. This year, 50,000 people will attend at least one of 50 different events, ranging from sandy-feet casual to supremely refined.

And this year as in years past, the French flag will be flying high.

Alain Ducasse, who earned his first Michelin three-star review in 1990 at age 33, will be honored at a glittering Saturday night Tribute Dinner—and seven of his favorite chefs will do the cooking. Six hundred people paid $500 each to attend the sold-out event.

Born on a farm in Southwestern France, Ducasse was 12 when he famously proclaimed “Grand-mere, these beans are overcooked!” and 16 when he began his culinary career. He’s considered a master of Provencal cooking, which he has elevated through his cooking schools, cookbooks, restaurants, food products and more. Today Ducasse has more than 20 restaurants in eight countries, including three Michelin three-stars: Monaco, Paris and London.

Ducasse was one of the SoBe festival’s earliest supporters and festival founder/director Lee Schrager credits him with helping to nudge the then-tiny event into the national spotlight. It was Ducasse’s participation, Schrager says, that encouraged other big-name chefs to sign on, to agree to leave their busy kitchens behind and come down to cook for a great cause.  

Following SoBe tradition, Mr. Ducasse chose the chefs who will cook his Tribute Dinner. (If I were a chef and Alain asked me to cook his Tribute Dinner, I’d be pretty proud, eh?) The chefs he chose? Laurent Gras (soon to open a restaurant in NYC), Alex Stratta (Stratta at the Wynn, Las Vegas), Charlie Trotter (Charlie Trotter's, Chicago), Frédéric Robert (former exec pastry chef, Wynn Las Vegas) and Frédéric Delaire (exec chef, Loews Miami Beach Hotel).

Doing the hors d’oeuvres for the reception are three chefs currently working for Ducasse: Phillipe Bertineau (Benoit Bistro, NYC), Didier Elena (Adour Alain Ducasse at the St Regis, NYC) and Sebastien Rondier (Mix on the Beach, Vieques, Puerto Rico).

Jean Paul Veziano, a top baker who once worked with Ducasse, is coming from Antibes to do the breads. And Marc Ehrler, who hails from Antibes but now lives in Houston, is bringing buckets of luxurious butters—truffle, yuzu, brown, sea salt—from National Dairy Brands, where he’s now the corporate chef.

French actress and model Carole Bouquet will be the evening’s emcee. Bouquet has appeared in more than 40 films--she’s best known to Americans as Bond girl Melina Havelock in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only--and was the face of Chanel in the 1990s. Bouquet is also a winemaker: she has a home in Pantelleria, a small island between Sicily and Tunisia, where she produces a sweet white wine called Sangue d’Oro. 

The 790-room Loews Miami Beach Hotel is both the venue for the Ducasse Tribute Dinner and the host hotel for the festival. Overseeing the hotel’s vast kitchens is French chef Frédéric Delaire, a native of Agen. I rang Delaire up just now to ask him how his festival prep was going and found him triple-checking his market list for the week ahead. For the Ducasse dinner alone he’s ordered 60 whole turbot (about $6,000 wholesale), three pounds of Perigord truffles ($3,000) and 400 lamb loins ($6,400) plus scores of other luxe ingredients.

But the chefs producing the Ducasse Tribute Dinner are hardly the only ambassadors of French cuisine who will be out and about at SoBe this year. Since it launched in 2001, the festival has always had a strong French accent, thanks to elite chefs such as Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Eric Ripert and Claude Troisgros, who have become mainstays on the talent roster.

Other well-known French chefs who have participated over the years include Michel Roux, Jean-Marie Auboine, Jean-Francois Bruel, Jean-Philippe Delmas, Tony Esnault, Pierre Hermé, Hubert Keller, Pascal Oudin, François Payard, Marc Poidevin, Michel Richard and Guy Savoy.

All sorts of heavyweights in French gastronomy, such as Jean-Luc Naret (former director of the Michelin Guide) and Ariane Daguin (of D’Artagnan) have also been involved.

Scores of top French winemakers come to SoBe to pour and the wines are always superb. Festival host Southern Wine & Spirits is the largest importer/distributor in the country and there’s no one in the wine-world they don’t know. The Wine Spectator is a major sponsor which lends both expertise and cachet. 

This year, another sold-out dinner, this one called The Brilliance of France, will be held at the legendary Biltmore Hotel. The menu follows the “imperial route” taken every summer by Napoleon’s Spanish-born wife, the Empress Eugenie de Montijo, and will feature dishes from three of her favorite gastronomic destinations: Biarritz, Bordeaux and Eugenie-les-Bains. Chefs for the evening are Pascal Nibaudeau (who has one Michelin star at Le Pressoir d’Argent in the Regent Grand Hotel Bordeaux), Biltmore executive chef Philippe Ruiz (a Frenchman who has worked in numerous Michelin-starred kitchens) and yet another Michelin-starred chef: Jean-Marie Gautier from Le Villa Eugenie in the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz. (Alain Ducasse was married at the Hotel du Palais, by the way, and Gautier prepared the dinner.)  

The wines for the Brilliance of France dinner include Champagne Pommery,  Château Suduiraut’s 'S’ de Suduiraut Bordeaux Blanc 2007, Château Petit-Village Pomerol 2007, Château Pichon-Longueville Baron Grand Cru Classé (Pauillac) 2003 and Château Suduiraut Grand Cru Classé Sauternes 2001.

At yet another elegant event called Best of the Best, in the ballroom of the Fountainebleau,  40-plus superstar chefs will each be cooking and serving a signature dish. Every dish will be paired with a wine, rated 90 points or higher by Wine Spectator. I quickly scanned of the list and saw Nicolas Feuillatte, Pol Roger, Pommery, Krug, Mumm, Hugel et Fils, Laurent-Perrier, Duboeuf, Latour, Leflaive, Jolivet, Jaboulet…many top French domaines.

If Champagne is your thing…one of the festival’s most popular events is a glorious beach barbecue called the BubbleQ. Twenty-five or so chefs will be grilling at stations around an enormous open-air tent and event manager Michael Moran is chilling 2,400 bottles of Perrier-Jouët for the four-hour party.

This year, Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart are co-hosting a dessert party called Let Them Eat Cake. Eleven top pastry chefs will fly in to create elegant, over-the-top desserts, served up with Moët. Jacques Torres is in charge of the piece de resistance: a 10-foot-tall birthday cake composed of…well let’s just say a lot of chocolate. It’s coming down from New York in a Fed Ex special-care truck. And knowing Jacques, it will be extravagant, dramatic and insanely delicious, the perfect way to wish Bonne Anniversaire to this spirited and very-special celebration.

Tickets to a few SoBe events are still available. For more info, visit the SoBe website here. 

To read about The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, November 2010), with 100 food and drink recipes from festival chefs, go here.

To buy the cookbook, go here. To enter to win a copy, go here.

Bid on tons of great items in the SoBe online auction here.


Photo of Alain Ducasse by Mikael Vojinovic.

The Cocktail Drinkers' Guide to Gardening: June

Originally from Hampshire, England, James Clay is an artist and sculptor who has lived in St. Remy for almost 20 years. He knows pretty much everything about gardening in Provence. Plus, he likes to drink...and write...often at the same time, of course. Each month here on ProvencePost.com, James goes out on a limb for us, serving up essental gardening tips along with appropriate seasonal drink suggestions. Here's what sprang from his fertile mind this month....


Finally "Flaming June" has arrived. A lot of us were beginning to feel she wouldn't get here at all this year. But yet again we find ourselves poolside, sun drenched and happy that Provence continues to live up to its brilliant image. The lavender is in its full glory. The olive trees appear to have fruit (after such a severe winter, it’s somewhat surprising). I’m trimming hedges and cypress trees like crazy. Most men (I've noticed) love to clip, cut, trim--and when it gets to chain saws it really is party time. So this last week I found myself up and down a ladder non-stop, clipping my ‘Italian’ cypresses. These are not native to Provence but nonetheless have been here for ages. They’re the tall, thin trees one sees in gardens and formal entrances  and not the 'Provencal' cypresses that are planted for wind breaks along many of the roads and in lines throughout  the countryside. 


The best method of dealing with ‘Italian’ cypresses is to keep them quite tightly clipped so the branches don't get too big and literally fall out and start making the tree look a mess--somewhat like a good hair cut where you have the odd stray hair sticking out (or up as the case may be). 


One of my neighbors took it into her head to get her gardener to re-shape her trees in the form of what can only be described as the 'male sex organ' which has somewhat added to her reputation. The only thing that I got round to doing to mine was chain sawing off the tops (of course off the top because off the bottom wouldn't work).  I took off six feet as they had become so tall that I thought I would have to rent a light aircraft to trim the tops.


So, should you find that your ‘Italian’ cypresses are becoming too much for you, I can assure you that cutting off the tops does not harm them and, in fact, appears to strengthen the growth at the bottom. 


Here I must just mention that shears are the only tool for clipping; if you have an electric or powered trimmer, I'd suggest you throw it away as soon as possible. Like most things in life, hand-made or hand-done is the best. Power trimmers tend to gnaw and shred and lead to diseased trees and hedges.


Trimming trees and the like results in giving one a heavy thirst so it wouldn't be unusual to start mulling over the recipes for a thirst quencher.  Once you've finished for the day, store your shears--and your ladder--safely away. This is something a 'real' gardener always does when finishing work, even in mid cut as it were. There’s no difference between this and vacuuming a room; if you hadn't  finished you wouldn't leave the vacuum there overnight! 

Were you fortunate enough to have friends staying or your partner handy, they may well have started preparing the evening's 'apero' or cocktail. After a quick shower to wash off the thousands of cypress clippings which have managed to stick to you during the afternoon, you’re now ready to join them on the terrace and, if luck is truly yours, then placed in your hand would be a sparkling glass of Champagne Jen.

Champagne Jen

1 part Cranberry Juice

1 part Orange Juice

1 bottle Champagne

Combine all ingredients in an iced punch bowl. Serve cold. 

And there you have the perfect recipe for a flaming Provencal evening in June. Or, for that matter, July or August or...

Which reminds me of Lily Bollinger's famous quote about bubbly, sent to me recently by a friend who loves Provence as much as I do:


"I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and I drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it, unless I'm thirsty."

Pip Pip!

Watercolor by James Clay: Cypresses surround an old Roman aqueduct near the village of Fontvieille.