Gourmet walk with Bénédicte Sire in the center of Marseille

Fatiha El Keurti helped to find the rarest products among the many treasures of spices, dried and candied fruits, salts (Hawaiian black, Persian blue, Himalayan rose ...) that attract visitors to Saladin.

A stone's throw from the Old Port, iodized notes perfume the stalls of Toinou, a true Marseille institution since the 1950s. Sea urchins from Carry-le-Rouet, oysters from Bouzigues, seawolf and dorade from an organic farm on the Frioul Islands just off Marseille—Nicolas Clément invites us to taste them all, and his oysters and shrimp.

Surrounded by the rustic-chic decor, you can savor cod brandade, veal pastrami, and mature cheeses. On the shelves: fig chutneys and olive creams. At L'Epicerie L'Idéal, Julia Sammut invites us to taste the ultimate in Mediterranean products. We can trust her to know the crème-de-la-crème, as her mother is a starred chef at La Fenière Inn in Lourmarin.

Plantains, Shanghai cabbage, tarot, soy sprouts—at Tamky, we travel from Asia to Africa without leaving Marseille. The ten brothers and sisters who run the shop created by their grandfather, who emigrated from Vietnam in 1979, offer Asian dishes prepared upstairs every morning. The highlight of the visit? The fresh spring rolls.

The smell of coriander and mint saturates the air at Tamky's. "Vietnamese dumplings and crepes?" "Top right", shoots Carole Sy (without a pause) to customers asking after her inventory.

Bénédicte Sire sets out to tell the life of the people behind their counter. Raouf Haaraf comes from Ghomrassen, a village in southern Tunisia, where the art of baking is handed down from father to son. At La Rose in Tunis, he makes honey cigars, makroudhs, gazelle horns or baklava, and many other sweet delicacies that delight the palate.

The crates overflowed with oranges, papayas, cassava. Warmed by the sun on the square formed by Halle Delacroix street, the kingdom of flavors stretches its borders of fruits and vegetables from all four corners of the globe. One of the most unusual offerings are gombos (okra), the long geometric green vegetables, who are stars of African cuisine. Momo, the boss of the stall, serves them up with a smile.

At the top of the rue de l'Arc, carefully planted by its inhabitants, L'Epicerie créole is much more than a food shop in Cap-Vert. A record store, a link to the home country, a bar—in a secret room of the multipurpose spice shop, Alessandrina Gomes hosts a tasting of a rum mixed with sugar cane honey and lemon zest.

In the paradise of spices, between the pyramids of incense and the braids of dried plants hanging from the ceiling, Ali, a native of Djibouti, concocts ointments ... and magic potions.

In the Place du Marché des Capucins, Pierre Auteroche welcomes us to Café Prinder. It is one of the oldest settlements in the city, opened in 1925 by his in-laws, the Prin-derres, originally from Italy.