Eating Out in Aix

Angkor Restaurant

This restaurant is situated in one of the main restaurant squares near the clock tower in Aix, where I had a lovely sunset view and watched the starlings fly around once again. After a month of eating purely European food, I desperately was craving something Asian so Grace and I went to this Cambodian restaurant.

Aix doesn’t do cheap eating out, whenever you go out you’re prepared to pay €15-20 for a meal. Here for €18 we had a deal which included each a summer roll, two spring rolls, two samosas, appropriate dipping sauces, and a Thai red curry with rice. Although the spring rolls and the samosas didn’t have the most authentic spicing, the summer roll was lovely and fresh, served with iceberg lettuce and mint. The curry didn’t disappoint either. With less chilli than I’m used to, it still had all the aromatic spicing of east Asian food with lemongrass and coconut milk aplenty. I would very happily recommend and return here.

Pizza Time

The worst experience ever. A brochure for this takeaway pizza company came through the letterboxes of every student in our accommodation, so one evening Grace, Jessica and I decided to get a takeaway. We ordered 3 pizzas and 2 sides, after 20 mins the website said our order was ready. In fact there was actually a 90 minute wait for it to arrive, and when it did, the delivery man was extremely drunk. Their website had made an error and not charged us for the two sides so they asked for 16 euros 50 cents extra, which I went to get cash for – but they got tired of waiting and just gave Grace and Jessica the food. They gave us a side different from what we had ordered and tried to charge extra for this. They then tried to pretend we had ordered large pizzas and to charge extra for it. They had put our medium pizzas in large boxes to do this. For the next week, the company then kept ringing Jessica’s phone trying to get her to arrange a time to drop off the rest of the money we supposedly owed them. Sadly, the pizza didn’t taste very good in the end!

Le Coquet

The go-to place for moules frites! For €13.50 you’re served a massive dish of moules marinieres with lovely crispy yet fluffy French fries. The portion is very generous and certainly is enough to fill you up. It’s a lovely dish to eat which I wouldn’t be able to in most places in the UK, and there’s something simple, comforting, but tasty about it.

However, the recommendation comes with a warning: the service is VERY slow. It takes about two and a half hours to eat here from the moment you sit down to the moment you get up having paid the bill. The first time we went, we waited 45 minutes to pay and leave the restaurant. The second time was only 25 minutes – and that was because I caught the eye of the manager in the restaurant interior who was passively watching his two waitresses do all the work.

Restaurant CROUS Gazelles

CROUS offers subsidised eateries at all universities in France. This particular restaurant is on the location of the Cite Universitaire de Gazelles, open weekday lunchtimes only. Although canteen quality, it means that for €3.30 you can get a hot meal (meat or vegetarian), a side salad, and dessert. The portion sizes for the hot meals are huge, though for budget reasons there is understandably far more carb than veg/protein in the portion. Nonetheless, it’s a cheap way of making sure you get a meal in during the day.

CROUS Restaurant-U

CROUS has another restaurant at the university, though with a much smaller eating section. This one offers sandwiches, paninis, salads, snacks, chips, and pasta. However, if you even want to try to get food from here, you have to go at 11am because after 11.30am it is always packed and half of the food has run out. Once again, it is cheap enough that most French students will buy their lunch almost everyday at university. Instead of paying the UoB cafe prices of nearly £5 for your sandwich/panini, it is instead a more reasonable €2.50-80, depending on whether you favour mozzarella over emmental. Rather bizarrely, as emmental is a French cheese and mozzarella is Italian, the vegetarian sandwiches and paninis cost more than the ones with meat in them!

Trattoria Pizzeria Da Vito

Da Vito has two sites in Aix – one is near Cours Mirabeau and more of a classy bar, the other is further into the old town with a more casual vibe. As we’ve often experienced slow service in Aix as part of Provence culture, we turned up early to the restaurant (7pm) while there were no guests and were glad we did! The inside was completely booked out, so we sat on one of the tables outside which didn’t bother us. The pizza was absolutely incredible: sourdough, made with fresh ingredients, and the massive oven inside allowed it to achieve the dream leopard spotting all over. We had cannoli for dessert which we found a little disappointing, but would definitely return here again to eat more pizza!

A plus,

Zoe x