Even the best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, especially if the mice or men in question are on holiday. In Marseille this summer, for instance, my two co-travellers and I had done our homework and, armed with our lists and Evernote memos, we knew exactly what we wanted to see, do and eat.

Marseille, a millennia-old port, is a welcoming, brawny, mongrel city, hemmed by beaches, cliffs and calanques or steep-walled inlets. Unlike Paris, the city centre is a real Mediterranean jumble of ethnicities; a cathedral jostling with mosques, djellabas rustling past hipsters in distressed denim.

And bouillabaisse, Marseille’s most famous export, exemplifies another successful jumble. Said to have evolved from the unsold dregs of the day’s catch, it’s now a very expensive, very protected dish. There’s even a Charter of Bouillabaisse, drawn up in 1980 by a dozen local restaurants. True to French bureaucratic form, the Charter specifies the ingredients (at least four of the following: rascasse, araignée, Saint-Pierre, rouget grondin, lotte, chapon, congre), and the serving method: the broth first, served with croutons and garlicky rouille (sauce made with breadcrumbs) on the side, then the fish, separately, sometimes even in courses.

“Bouillabaisse,” we kept saying to each other, determined to sample it. It didn’t seem hard to find. Every restaurant along the Vieux Port offered it, and we’d heard that L’Aromat even served a “Hamburger de bouillabaisse.”

But every day, something distracted us. Marseille’s food, especially its seafood, was as varied as its population, and we kept accidentally eating too much to contemplate such a massive fish extravaganza. There were anchovy pizzas, panisse or discs of deep-fried chickpea flour (“besan pakoras!” said my friend delightedly), soup à la pistou, the French pesto, and fish with candied lemon peel. Among the winding streets of Le Panier, there were supions or baby cuttlefish, sautéed with lemon and garlic and basil, and in the immigrant neighbourhood of Noailles, harissa-tinged couscous.

At the Sunday market at Aix-en-Provence, I spied a label saying Saucisse à la Lavande, and wandered towards an imperious woman in a hat at a table heaped high with gnarly sausages and cured meats. “You want to try?” she said, slicing off slivers of the lavender and the myrtle sausages for me. Surprisingly, neither tasted like potpourri; there was just a hint of flower among the dominant gristly pork. “Here, take another,” said her daughter, seeing that I was intrigued. “This is sanglier sauvage, a wild boar.”

“Ooh,” I said, struck by the dark, gamey flavour. She beamed, and gave me another knobbly slice, dotted with splodges of white fat.

“What is this one?” I said enthusiastically, even though I didn’t really like its strong smell.

“Âne,” she said, cleaning her knife.

“Âne?” I said, stopping mid-chew, my mouth full of what I now knew had once been a blameless donkey.

We got back to Marseille just in time for a palate-cleansing aperitif. Like any good Mediterranean spot worth its salt, Marseille has its anise-flavoured liqueur: pastis, absinthe’s more genteel cousin. We ordered Ricard and Pastis 51 at random from a bar menu, and waited.

I generally don’t like the taste of anise, and none of our recommendations had been very encouraging. “Dilute it with plenty of water” and “Ask for ice” don’t seem like testaments to the taste of the tipple. But these were herby and summery, the licorice taste clouded by the water. We lingered, ordering more pastis and peanuts, and potatoes, and then cold white wine.

Then we remembered that it was our last day in Marseille, and we still hadn’t encountered any bouillabaisse. So we sped down the hill towards Le Miramar at the marina. But we were too late. It was 10pm, and Le Miramar’s kitchen had closed. The maître d’s of the neighbouring restaurants too, shook their heads.

Defeated, we skulked away, envisioning Subway in our future. But Marseille was kind to the end. At the Place des Huiles, we found the charming Bistrot des Dames, where there was no bouillabaisse, but instead, a menu replete with the flavours of the sunny South of France: courgette flowers, anchovies, olives, fennel, and lemons from Menton, a few towns away. The slow-cooked jarret (shin) of beef came lacquered, as our waitress called it, in its own braising juice, with fondant potatoes and a Pixar-worthy ratatouille tower of paper-thin courgettes and olives. Sardines were marinated in lemon zest, olive oil and marjoram; the filet of lamb cooked in basil, resting on a bed of tomato marmalade.

“I’ll bring you a dessert,” said the waitress, looking at our spotless plates, and she came back out with two: a peach poached in rosé wine and a strawberry cheesecake with a single frozen litchi hidden in the centre. We couldn’t have asked for more from Marseille.

( Naintara Maya Oberoiis a food writer based in Paris )

Follow her on Twitter >@naintaramaya

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