Wined and dined in old Avignon

compete with the medievaloRenaissance city setting, so might as well chuck up a big Seventies shed. No matter. The seduction is within.

Food lust stalks the aisles. Here are high hues, juicy fertility and plump fruit squeezed by basket-toting housewives well-versed in the matter of ripe melons. Aromas of herbs and roasting chickens. Full-blooded meat displays. An ocean’s worth of fish lying wide-eyed on the slab, astonished that the sea has retreated to reveal them. Hanging hams like mandolins and every shade of charcuterie. Here, in short, is all the abundance that nourishes the quotidian sensuality of Provençal life. You’re not merely shopping; you’re stomach-deep in a Mediterranean culture where the spiritual segues so seamlessly to the sensuous that few can tell the difference. Food, like the Virgin, is central.

And eyes sparkle with enthusiasm for olives. “It’s a tanche, from Nyons,” said Emmanuelle Borba-da-Costa on her olives-r-us stand. “Just 24 hours in salt; no other treatment.” It tasted more olive-y than any other olive ever. Then there was tapenade and all the varied spreads that announce the aperitif hour. I shot off in search of Ricard, noted it was 9.30am, and diverted to Nathalie Francoz’s cheese stand. When I grow out of journalism, I’m going to sell cheese. It will be my passport to a world more palpable and pungent. Provence doesn’t do cow’s cheese – but goat’s? Oh, my word. Nathalie prepared me a plate of four. “As the cheese ages, so the initial acidity lessens – but it returns at the end of the tasting,” she said. Really? Really.

Over the way, Jonathan Chiri was – is – almost certainly the only Californian chef with a lunch-stand in a French market. His story twists and turns via top-class cooking in Santa