The Mediterranean port town of Sete in France, is famous for its annual Worldwide Festival of electronic music, seven miles of glorious beaches and fish.
Lots of fish.
Sole, hake, sea bass, red mullet, whiting, monkfish, tuna, sea bream, ocean perch, turbot and octopus are among the 90 species fished off the coast of Sète. La tielle, a cuttlefish pie with tomato and spices, is sold in just about every bakery and bistro. It is as ubiquitous as pizza and an acquired taste.
So every year around the June 29 feast day of St. Peter, the fishermen of Sète get together to celebrate. They honor those among their ranks who have perished at sea. They ask Peter, the patron saint of their profession, for protection. They arm themselves with trident-tipped wooden spears and shields for a waterborne jousting competition from wooden rowboats. And they brag about their fish, consuming large quantities of it with a local rosé.
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Recipe: Bourride à la Sétoise
This is the one time of year we all relax, said José Llinares, the director of Sète’s fishing port. It’s the moment you set aside your sadness, you bury your woes. Everyone respects the traditions. It’s a little like Christmas.
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Fishermen and families in Sète celebrate the feast day of St. Peter. Credit Nanda Gonzague for The New York Times
Sète (it rhymes with wet) has been a fishing center since Louis XIV authorized a port here in 1655. An enclave of 45,000 people in the Languedoc-Roussillon region, it is built around a hill, with the sea on one side, a lagoon on the other and a network of canals joining them. Paul Valéry, who was born and is buried here, immortalized Sète in his poetry; the singer and composer Georges Brassens, another native, wrote and sang a catchy tune about it that seems to be played just about everywhere at least once a day.
Unlike the coastal towns of the Côte d’Azur to the east, with their yachts, luxury hotels and famous visitors, Sète is working class. The port area smells of the sea, fish and a hint of diesel. Fishermen boast that when the tuna catch is included in their tonnage, Sète is the largest fishing port in the Mediterranean. (And that’s not including its huge oyster and mussel farms.)
But the business is suffering. Tuna fishing is limited by strict international quotas; sardines and anchovies have nearly disappeared. The soaring price of fuel has driven many fishermen to sell their boats for scrap. Less than a decade ago, there were 30 large fishing trawlers here; now there are only 14.
Still, as Mr. Llinares said, this was a weekend for celebration. Festivities kicked off on a Friday night with a procession from the fishing port up the narrow streets to the Church of St. Louis. Young daughters of fishermen, in long skirts, aprons and kerchiefs, led the way. Fishermen in white pants and shoes and striped blue-and-white sweaters carried torches. (Except for one woman who fishes on her own, the 1,000 or so registered fishermen are men.) The star attraction was a 900-pound wooden boat trimmed in white neon, filled with red gladiolas and a statue of a serious-looking St. Peter. It took eight men to carry it on their shoulders.
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This was also a weekend about eating. For the occasion, the town of Sète published a cookbook with dozens of residents’ favorite recipes; it is already in its second printing.
At ACD, an upscale restaurant on the beach, the owner, Gérard Janicot, wowed customers at the bar with plates piled high with shellfish. First came murex, an elegant snail with a pointed end, served with mayonnaise made with raw egg yolks. Pichiline, a pint-size local scallop cooked with parsley, white wine, shallots and lime, followed.
Then Mr. Janicot brought out a plate of objects that looked like rocks or potatoes. They were a rare, if ugly, shellfish named violet de roche and nicknamed sea potato. They hide under rocks deep in the sea and know how to resist attack. He slashed one open with a small knife to reveal flesh that looked like egg yolk and pale soft cheese flecked with red and black. Loosening the flesh with his thumbnail, he dropped a bit of fine wine vinegar on it to cut the acidity.
You have to eat it slowly, he said. I am convinced it has more iodine in it than any other fish in the world. You either love it or you hate it. Indeed, the sea potato had a salty but not unpleasant taste of metal.
Then Florent Tarbouriech, who runs the Mediterranean’s largest mussel and oyster farm in nearby Marseillan with his wife, Sabine, took over. He demonstrated the proper way to eat a giant, naturally grown mussel, running his forefinger over the flesh. Feel how soft and consistent it is, he said. It takes years for a mussel like this to grow.
He instructed a diner to suck the mussel from its shell and chew it along with a bite of bread. A great mussel with a crust of bread it’s better than any great fish at a three-star restaurant, he said. It’s like a drug.
Later, at the restaurant La Coquerie, which has a Michelin star, much of the conversation focused on how to properly prepare la bourride à la Sétoise, a local specialty of monkfish traditionally cooked with leeks, onions, carrots and parsley, and smothered with a garlicky aioli. The dish has disappeared from most restaurant menus here.
It’s rich, expensive and a little old-fashioned, a dish you make for Sunday lunch and holidays, said Anne Majourel, La Coquerie’s owner and chef.
Ms. Majourel created a bourride amuse-bouche with mussels in a vegetable base turned green by Swiss chard. She used monkfish liver to add texture to the mayonnaise, but she eliminated the garlic. Garlic in a Sétoise bourride? Never, she said. It’s the bourride of Agde that’s full of garlic, referring to a nearby town.
The debate over bourride spilled into lunch the next day. Between the main course of grilled sea bass and dessert, François Commeinhes, the mayor of Sète, promised to prepare his own version of bourride for any or all of his fellow diners.
If you come, I will cook, he said. I promise to use plenty of garlic.
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