Visitors to the Côte d’Azur don’t need to set foot in a museum to clock that the region was for a long time under Italian control. In fact, it became part of France only as recently as 1860, which explains why the traditional dialect, architecture and, most obviously, cooking all have a distinctly Ligurian feel (and why there’s a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Nice, his birthplace).
It’s unsurprising, then, that pissaladière, “a typically Niçoise hors d’oeuvre”, according to the city’s disgraced former mayor Jacques Médecin, bears more than a passing resemblance to pizza. (Indeed, food writer Caroline Craig, whose family hails from farther west, fancifully dates the Provençal fondness for the stuff to the Roman occupation, while Jonathan Meades believes that Marseille does better pizza than Naples). But, as Noble Rot Soho’s chef Alex Jackson observes, whatever you liken it to, pissaladière is “much more than the sum of its parts. To call it ‘onion tart [or pizza] with anchovies and olives’ somehow underplays it”. Salty-sweet and deliciously oily, it’s ideal cut into small squares and paired with a well-chilled aperitif or, served in more generous wedges, with a green salad. Sunshine optional.
