September 17, 2026 Breakfast - Yogurt, a plum, and a slice of bread with cheese. Lunch - Le Salle in Hyères. Dinner - L’ Authentik in Tamaris

September 17, 2026 Breakfast - Yogurt, a plum, and a slice of bread with cheese. Lunch - Le Salle in Hyères. Dinner - L’ Authentik in Tamaris

I woke up at 7:00 and watched the sun rise. I opened the door and windows to air out the end of the house we stay in until around 10:00.

I ate a breakfast of yogurt and a plum and a round of Parisian baguette spread with butter, pear jam, and slices of Leyden cheese plus a cup of tea.

Then at 11:30 we drove to Hydres.

When we arrived, we walked to the Banque Museum, but 

it was closed. Apparently we had read the time wrong. Since it opened again at 2:00 we split up. Billy and Elaine walked to the old town where they ate lunch and Suzette and I walked across the street to the nearest restaurant we could see from the museum, named Le Salle.

We were in luck. It turned out that Le Salle was ranked a 4.9 out of 5.00 and its dishes were the most creative of the trip so far. It had a smoker oven and many of its dishes were smoked. We passed on the smoked salmon and smoked ribs. Instead, we selected the daily special of filet of black cod  and a filet of duck and glasses of rose and a glass of red wine.

Soon we were served a small bowl of tapenade made with both chopped green and black olives in seasoned olive oil with 1/2 inch  thick baguette rounds. This was probably the best tapenade I have ever tasted.

Then in about thirty minutes our dishes were served. The tender black cod filet sat on a tower of sautéed vegetables, including eggplant, zucchini, onion, and morel mushrooms the pile sat on a base of sight sautéed red and yellow tomato slices in a thick olive oil sauce.  Forkfuls combining, fish, vegetables, tomato and sauce were unbelievably delicious.

But the duck filet was even better, entering the pantheon of amazingly interesting dishes. 

It was slices of a duck filet lightly seared on the fat side sauced with a thick fig sauce, served on sautéed slices of sweet potato dusted with smoked paprika with a mound of smoked yogurt mixed with honey garnished with alfalfa sprouts served on one side of the plate sprinkled with pieces of candied walnuts. We had never eaten smoked yogurt, nor had we ever encountered the combination of fresh of fresh fig sauce, smoked paprika seasoned sweet potatoes, and smoked yogurt and honey and candied walnuts before. The combination was beyond delicious. It was revelatory. 

Both the rose’ and red wines were delicious. Everything was served in fancy old mismatched glasses and china, just like in an old family home, which was the intended atmosphere of the restaurant.

We sat on the outdoor patio, covered with a tarp for shade, surrounded by bushes and palm trees on a raised wooden plywood floor covered with fake green grass. I guess the decor was pleasantly funky, but removed from the center of town by elevation and foliage.

We loved the meal and since we finished the entrees at 1:30, leaving 30 minutes until the museum reopened. We decided to order dessert and a cafe Macchiato for Suzette. Suzette selected fresh figs for dessert. We were soon served a small plate filled with thin slices of dark and green figs garnished with a mound of regular yogurt mixed with crème fraiche, dusted with crushed sugar praline and some fresh flower pedals.

The dark red figs were much sweeter than the green fig slices and Suzette decided in that moment that we would plant a dark fig bush when we returned home.

I ordered a kir of crème de cassis and white wine that the waiter mixed with a bit more cassis to sweeten the drink that was served in a tall old cut glass champagne Flute that was lovely to look at and feel and tasted great with the fresh figs and yogurt and crème fraiche.

This was another great meal occurring without any planning, 

We finished at 2:00 and paid the very reasonable bill of 81€ and met Billy and Elaine and walked back across the street to the Banque Museum. Billy would not store his backpack in a locker so he waited outside, while we saw an amazing Calder exhibit organized from the extensive collection of the Foundation Maeght. The Maeghts were Calder’s gallery, publishers of his graphics, and longtime friends.  The first floor exhibit was extensive, including sketches for many of the pieces on his famous Circus work, now owned by the Whitney Museum, the original paintings used to make the Maeght posters, and many mobile and stabiles and steel and bronze sculptures. Then downstairs there were video clips of interviews wish Calder and Maeght that displayed additional works by Calder including a 6.3 meter (20 foot) high stabile at the Foundation Maeght in Saint Paul de Venice.

 It was the best Calder exhibit I have ever seen.

There was also an interesting permanent collection of mostly images of Hyeres or by artists associated with Hyeres.

It was 3:00 when we finished seeing the exhibit. When we joined Billy again outside the museum we decided to drive up the hill behind Hyeres to the fort (Chateau Hyeres) built to guard the town. It was on the top of the mountain behind the town with a view of the surrounding area and is one of the largest fortresses in Provence.  We drove up and up and finally arrived at the parking lot beside the gate of the outer wall. Suzette and I walked to a promontory overlooking Hyeres and the Mediterranean beyond, while Billy and Elaine walked up the hill to the inner castle and keep. It was a truly impressive fort.

It was 4:00 when we drove down the mountain and stopped at a Boulangerie on the outskirts of Hyeres on our way where we bought croissants and baguette for breakfast and cookies for dessert.

In rush hour traffic it took an hour to drive to L’ Authentik Restaurant located in the aquaculture production area where oysters and mussels are raised, processed, and sold in Tamaris.

We arrived around 5:30 for our 7:00 reservation. We were shown to a table and offered wine and oysters on the half shell, but told we would need to wait until 7:00 when the kitchen opened to order any other menu items.

Billy, Suzette, and I ordered one dozen oysters each (Elaine does not eat oysters) and a bottle of L ‘ Elegance white Cotes du Provence wine.

Around 5:50 I excused myself before the oysters were served and returned to our car and linked to our meditation group for our weekly meditation.

When I returned to the table at 6:20 Billy and Elaine had gone on a hike to the nearby park we passed on the road in where they watched a boules competition among older men.

My dozen oysters had been taken away and soon I was served a dozen of the freshest oysters I have ever eaten. The local oysters have a deep bowl on one side and all of the oysters I was served were either 2 or 3 size, not unlike the oysters at Cancale.

At 7:00 Billy and Elaine returned and we ordered steamed mussels in a Parmesan Sauce, a plate of large shrimp (gambas), and two orders of fried oyster beignets and a bottle of L’ Elegance rose’ that won a silver medal in the Paris wine competition that was quite good. None of the cooked dishes matched the fresh oysters. In fact we all agreed they were terrible, probably because the old drunk guy we met when we first arrived, who was not a chef, prepared them. The beignets were especially disappointing because they were covered in a thick batter that had neither the crispness of tempura coated with panko or U.S. fried oysters coated with a crunchy cornmeal batter.

We left disappointed and Billy and Elaine paid the 176€ bill. 

When we returned to the villa at around 9:00 and Suzette and Elaine immediately returned to finishing the big 1000 piece puzzle. Elaine cut the two  chocolate filled fig Newton shaped cookies but with cookie dough and we made tea and I took a sip of Marc de Provence. I checked my portfolio and found that it had a super day increasing 2.36% to very nearly an all time high.

The market seems to be on a trajectory unaffected by the war in the Middle East, the soaring inflation and National debt and the dysfunctional political drama.

At 9:45 I went to bed and awakened at 11:55 to blog this entry and went back to bed at 3:00.

Bon Appetit