Located among a strip of restaurants in the hipster district of Marseille (Cours Julien), L'Arome's…read moredaily changing menu is a delicious introduction to the flavors and possibilities of local French cooking. Coming in for dinner without a reservation, we were seated outside in the alley, but were given no less attention and service from the friendly waiter, who translated the handwritten menu for us to English. For our appetizers, we started with the pasta filled with cod and served in a creamy sauce with artichokes, and the creative sardine "mille-feuille." Normally, mille-feuille is a sweet dessert (also known as a Napoleon) layered with pastry cream and puff pastry. In this case, in between the slices of crispy puff pastry were slices of sardines, and instead of the vanilla pastry cream was a mint pesto. Fascinating and delicious! For our main courses, we moved on to the maigre roti white fish with stuffed zucchini--the flavors of the fish were so distinct and delicious and paired so well with the curry-like sauce. We also had the octopus, which came with two long, tender tentacles served with tender, fried gnocchi and bok choy, which was just as amazing! The focus on ingredients and perfect execution defines French cuisine, and L'Arome's approach with its creative, changing menu and delicious flavors was the perfect embodiment of this! The prices were also surprisingly reasonable (at 24 Euros for two courses, or 28 Euros for three), though the portions were quite small. I'd definitely recommend a visit to this small yet innovative and quality-focused restaurant!

Very good meal, lovely staff, great menu, highly recommended…read more The food was beautifully cooked. A most enjoyable meal.

In Toulon, there are SO MANY options to have a meal along this magnificent waterfront. So we…read morehappened to picked La Tortue and we are ecstatic with our choice! There was 6 in our party and that gave us a chance to sample more offerings from La Tortue. We skipped the very tempting appetizers and ordered our entrees. My wife had an entree Ceasar Salad and I selected the Paleron De Boeuf. The Ceasar Salad came with lightly breaded, crispy chicken (apparently a local tradition) and a creamy anchovie dressing. The Paleron De Beef was very reminiscent of Beef Bourgonone, with a mildly sweet sauce and served over a bed of mashed potatoes. The offerings were absolutely perfect. We are returning tonight to try some more of their menu and their extensive dessert menu.

The quality of everything was the very best from the welcome to check out. The whole cooked Loup, a…read morelocal fish, was to die for, the side dishes were excellent, the wait staff made us feel special, and the house wines were very good. I was pleasanly surprised at how reasonable the total price was. We had had a train engine breakdown and a five hour delay, so we arrived fairly late. Although there were few empty seats, bread and olive oil were provided and the main courses were timely. We will go back.