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socca in Nice
Friday, October 21 2016
Somewhere over the eastern Bay of Biscay, Atlantic Ocean
The night passed quickly as our jumbo jet headed east across the Atlantic Ocean and then France. There was light in the sky well before we landed, and then immigration and customs were perfunctory at most. (I remember being amazed at how easy it was to enter France the last time we came nearly 15 years ago; it's almost like visiting Mexico.) Gretchen had arranged for someone holding a sign to meet us as we arrived and take us to our hotel, but she'd been confused about the day of our arrival and had accidentally set that up for yesterday. The company that does this sent a guy out anyway, though at the time we assumed the fuckup had been theirs instead of ours, so we weren't very nice as we were being driven eastward along the coast to our hotel.
The hotel was the Hotel La Pérouse, built onto a rocky ridge cleaving the beach from the harbor to the east. The hotel, as well as another hotel and a number of castle-like structures, rambled organically up the rock, punctuated here and there by terraces containing pools and patios. Our room was fairly low in the cascade of structures, and after we checked in (and I'd gotten an adapter from the helpful hotel staff so I could charge my computer) I immediately climbed into bed and fell asleep. Gretchen never has the same problem I do with immediate jetlag, and she was eager to go do stuff. She kept coming back into the room and trying to get me to join her out by the pool, but for me it was as if I were under the effects of a Jovian-level gravitational force. Eventually, though, I had a dream where Gretchen was yelling at me to get up, and it was so disturbing that I managed to get myself out of bed and stagger through the warren of hallways and stairs, eventually climbing up to the highest level in the hotel, where a hot tub could be found. Gretchen said she'd be there, but she'd already returned down to the pool, having found the hot tub insufficiently hot. The weather in Nice was a bit nippier than we would've predicted several weeks ago, staying down in the low 60s. I found the poolside uncomfortably chilly and soon retreated back into the room.
Eventually, though, Gretchen managed to get me to join her on a stroll into Nice for dinner. As has been the pattern for European cities, Nice is gorgeous, with all the buildings made of stone or brick and all the roofing made of fired red ceramics. With the palm trees and the masonry, it looks a little like Los Angeles, though a version that has had time to settle into itself. There's no room for cheap commercialism, and all the poorly-built buildings have been replaced with better versions hundreds of years ago.
Our first destination was Chez Pipo, a quasi-restaurant famous for a dish called socca. Socca is a kind of flatbread made with nothing but chickpea flour, water, olive oil, and salt. From where we sat in the cramped dining room, we could see it being made as we sipped from our glasses of rosé (what one is supposed to drink when eating socca). It was involved process. First the batter was poured into a large circular pan and then placed in an ancient (as it turned out, hundreds-of-years-old) wood-fired oven. Using a special long-handled metal tool with finger-like prongs on the end, the pan was spun a few degrees every few seconds until the batter had started to bubble and solidify. Then it was brought out and its surface worked over to give it a uniform, rough texture. Then it was baked some more. Occasionally the socca master would toss in a single small stick of wood to keep the fire burning hot. The end product of all this work was a large golden-brown flat bread. It would then be cut into little crescent-shaped pieces to be piled on plates and given to those who had ordered it. Any parts with excessive blackening were discarded in a special pile for some unknown use, and then the pan would be wiped "clean," covered with a generous layer of olive oil, and reused without washing. It's a mild-tasting but rich comfort food that sticks to your ribs. While the surface is slightly crispy, the interior has a delightful creamy quality. Though socca supposedly comes from Genoa, it seems North African, and perhaps it ultimately is. The people at the next table over suggested sprinkling black pepper on it, which was a really good idea.
Also available at Chez Pipo was a kind of cheeseless pizza that tasted like it might contain anchovies. All of this was designed to be eaten with fingers; supposedly Chez Pipo doesn't have any silverware for those who want to use it. We came at a good time, because soon after we arrived there was a line of people waiting for seats.
That wasn't a full meal, so we had it in us to continue to a second restaurant for a second dinner, this time a place called La Cigogne du Port, which Gretchen had discovered via HappyCow.net because of the non-dairy pizza they make there. The pizzas are oval and made on amazingly thing slabs of crust. Ours were vegan, though the couple at the next table over were feasting on large chunks of dead animals. While Gretchen was in the bathroom, the woman who runs the place tried to speak with me in French and I felt like a complete idiot. The restaurant had a mid-sized dog of some breed (I want to say some sort of spaniel) hanging out, and we kept wanting to encourage him to hang out with us. He was full of love, but the woman running the place kept insisting the dog go back to the kitchen. But when she'd be distracted, he'd sneak out and hang out with either us or the people at the other table. And then when the restaurant owner came back in, he would run back into the kitchen without even being told to do so.
One of the discoveries Gretchen and I made as we walked the streets of Nice was that hot sauce isn't really a thing here. In some stores you can find Tabasco sauce, but that's about it. (I don't like Tabasco sauce; it's too vinegary and mild, relic from the 1980s.) In one little grocery store, we eventually found Asian hot sauce similar to sambal oelek, but it later proved too salty when I tried to use it.
On the walk back to the hotel, we had to round the north end of the harbor. The cheapest and smallest vessels all seemed to be docked furthest into the harbor, and the yatchs became progressively fancier as we neared the Mediterranean.
The master, his hundreds-of-years-old oven, and his socca masterpiece.
Me with socca and rosé
Socca kitchen at Chez Pipo with reflections from the dining room in the glass separating the two. You can see Gretchen's reflection in this pic. Click to enlarge.
The festive scene outside Chez Pipo. Click to enlarge.
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