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!
