Markets

Markets are a great source of joy and excitement for me.
As soon as I arrive somewhere, I locate the markets and if possible I settle nearby.

The market gives the poult of a place, city or village, it tells us about its customs, its cultures, breeders, producers, sometimes even those who sell their treasures and tell you, in a language that we does not always understand but which speaks directly to the heart which is in the belly, how they go about it.

The market is my number one source of inspiration.

I don’t know about you but I can’t say exactly what I’m going to cook until I go to the market.
As soon as I set foot in it, however, my imagination is set in motion, the multiple associations of tastes and ingredients fly through my mind and the combinations unfold like in a slot machine!!!

There is something ancestral in the art of purchasing goods, which connects us to our roots, to the Human and which moves me a lot.
The market, the bazaar, the souk, the forum, the mercato… it is the public square where, in some countries still, for lack of modern communication tools, we give each other news, we share information, we exchange goods or know-how.

During the last 6 months I had the chance to go to the markets and cook products from Almeria, Palermo, Roma, Irun, Donostia and Essaouira, to discover a huge bush market where I was the only Western woman, to get my supplies from ageless farmers but animated by adolescent energy, from butchers as gentle as lambs, from surly greengrocers, from crazy artichoke sellers!

I would spend my life surveying the markets of the world, adapting my culinary knowledge to local products and flavors.
Emotions, pleasure, sharing would be the sinequanone conditions of these wanderings,
that’s my Eutopia.

—Melanie Bordas

@naked___lunch

La Vie Sauvage
Association culinaire et culturelle
9, Plateau de L’Atalaye
64200 Biarritz
06 87 44 65 99