repas du samedi midi

But before Fontvieille, you have lunch in Arles, the largest town close to your house.  It is Saturday and there is a huge street festival going on: clothes, food of every kind, trinkets, schwag galore.  You buy some olives and at Damien’s urging the vendor plucks a clove of garlic the size of an almond from some oil and gives it to you.  He tells you to eat it.  The whole thing.  So you do in one crunchy, garlicky-sweet, gentle-tasting bite.  Yum.

You go to a plaza for lunch.  You want to eat at the place displaying a pan full of paella it took at least three strong Frenchmen to carry outside.   Damien, however, has a problem with all the flies swarming around the rice and seafood, so we go to the next place over.  For some reason he suggests the burger as my first French meal in a French restaurant in France.  “It’s a good place to start,” he says, as you wonder why you should try a hamburger -- how this is going to be better than almost any burger in the states?  It comes with a little salad and fries and is . . . totally average.  Also, the ketchup is runny.  Vive le Heinz.