Provence: As Advertised : Taking the back roads to avoid crowds, discover hidden eateries

ST.-REMY-DE-PROVENCE, France — We made our first visit to Provence with some trepidation.

Would this most desirable of vacation locales be as crowded and touristy and expensive as friends had warned? Had Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence” and subsequent books ushered in hordes of visitors to transform exquisite pastoral villages into a Disney of farmlands?

What we found on this trip in May surprised us. It was easy to avoid the best-known spots and venture along tree-lined back roads that wove through small picturesque towns in the Provencal heartland of Les Alpilles, the “Little Alps.”

Here, ancient ruins dotted rolling green hills. Country bistros dished up the best food we’d ever eaten. Town markets offered a dizzying array of fresh produce and regional specialties: blocks of soaps, distinctively patterned fabrics, handcrafted pottery, sachets of lavender and lusciously flavorful olive oils.

The 15-mile-long white limestone mountain chain spreads between the Rho^ne and Durance valleys. We chose the town of St.-Remy-de-Provence (population 9,500), often dubbed the gateway to the Alpilles chain, as a base to explore the region.

Halfway between Avignon and Arles, more than 400 miles south of Paris, St.-Remy is a farming community sitting amid one of France’s most fertile regions. The surrounding countryside is divided into a patchwork of lush vineyards, pastures, orchards and cultivated fields. Here, Vincent van Gogh, who spent a year in an asylum in St.-Remy after hacking off part of his left ear, painted some of his most stunning landscapes.

Only days before our arrival in Provence, a friend and I booked a room in the Cha^teau des Alpilles. (After all, who among us hasn’t ever wanted to stay in a cha^teau?) Just outside St.-Remy, we stopped our tiny white rental car to ask directions.

Unfortunately, there are two French words that I always confuse: droit (right) and gauche (left). After a lengthy conversation with a mustachioed man, I returned to the car, proud that my high school French had proven sufficient, armed with the knowledge that we were 10 minutes away, but uncertain as to which direction to turn at the next junction.

An hour and a half later, we found the Cha^teau des Alpilles, a small, elegant 19th century villa at the end of a lane where branches of tall sycamores knit together overhead, creating a green cathedral-like passageway.

“Well, we weren’t in a rush,” I said, placatingly to my friend.

Our tall-ceilinged bedroom was filled with Provencal fabrics and heavy wood antiques. Fragrant red roses adorned the mantelpiece of our room; the small writing desk was equipped with a dish of mints. Thick white terry-cloth robes sat ready by the tub.

Satisfied with our accommodations, we trundled down the winding staircase and plied the cha^teau’s owner, Francoise Bon, with questions about restaurants in the vicinity--a tactic we employed wherever we went, figuring residents might have better suggestions than our guidebooks.

Silently praying that we’d be able to find our cha^teau in the dark, we set out for Eygalieres, a place so small (population: 1,500) that it’s not mentioned in many books. It’s a 20-minute drive east of St.-Remy.

The narrow main street in Eygalieres climbs up a hill, leading to an ancient castle keep. Here, we found the 12th century stone church and belltower. As the sun painted swaths of red and orange clouds across the sky, we climbed farther. There at the top of the hill, you can gaze beyond the olive and oak trees, out upon the La Caume Mountains, Durance Valley and the chalky-white Alpilles.

So, we sighed, this is Provence. We saw no one on our sunset stroll up the hill, no one at the ruins. As far as we could tell, we were the only tourists in town.

At the Bistrot D’Eygalieres, we had our first in a series of spectacular meals: lightly cooked asparagus over which a deep green olive oil was drizzled, thin strips of delicately smoked salmon and succulent rosemary-flavored lamp chops. The apple pie, with nuggets of carmelized sugar and a light, flaky pastry shell, concluded the dinner.

Many towns in Provence have a weekly outdoor market, le marche. St.- Remy hosts its market on Wednesdays, including a small flea market as well as a food and produce market. Beginning early in the morning, dozens of vendors lay out their wares. Some tables are loaded with soaps, including chunky green blocks made from olive oil. Other tables offer an array of jugs of virgin olive oil and huge bowls of spiced olives. Still others have bolts and bolts of traditional Provencal fabrics in bright reds, blues and yellows.

Several vendors display an array of cheeses, including a number of different goat cheeses (some wrapped in chestnut leaves into little packets). During the spring and summer, fruit abounds. Nothing beats the flavor-packed strawberries of Provence.

The market also offers little oddities: barrettes adorned with shellacked cookies, handcrafted pottery with raku glazes, small whisk-broom-like bundles of dried lavender, or floppy hats of raffia.

But as soon as noon approaches, despite the crowds, despite the brisk trade, everyone begins to pack up. After all, it is time for another meal.

For our lunch, we had planned an excursion to the town of Paradou, a 20-minute drive southwest of St.-Remy, a village smaller than Eygalieres. We drove through Paradou without realizing that this, indeed, was the entire town. We turned around and stopped two middle-age women, the only pedestrians we saw in what seemed like an almost empty village.

“Ahh, Cafe Paradou,” one stout woman beamed, as though we had stumbled upon a well-guarded local secret. Then she obligingly pointed to the restaurant, the Bistrot Paradou, sitting several yards away by a “T” in the dusty road.

Forewarned by friends, we had made lunch reservations. “Why would we ever need those?” I thought as we crossed the parking lot to the rustic bistro. “Who would ever know to come here?”

Inside, the place was packed. No tourists. In my best French, I quickly told the waiter, who looked as though he might escort us to the door, that we had reservations. His furrowed brow eased, his eyebrows shot up in surprise and he brusquely showed us to our table.

The room was loud with the chatter of friends and families. A bottle of house wine and a beautiful, bright yellow pitcher of water automatically landed on our bare-wood table. (The pitchers are not for sale.)

As we sipped the wine, we watched one French couple after another come and beg to be admitted. But without the magic word, “reservation,” none were seated. The cook here prepares food for a certain number and would serve no more.

French actor Jean Reno sat in the back. No one even glanced in his direction.

We weren’t given menus; instead, our two-hour meal began as a waitress set before us a salad of baby mesclun and a piping-hot puff-pastry filled with goat cheese. Next: exquisitely roasted chicken, with potatoes cut into half-dollar-size round chips smothered in a creamy cheese sauce. When the waitress brought over a tray of dozen different cheese, we sighed and gamely tried to taste as many as possible while leaving room for dessert: an apple and pear tart.

After espressos, our meal was complete. We eyed each other nervously, waiting for the check and realizing we were clueless about what such a feast would cost. The tab: $58 for lunch for two.

Feeling as though we’d been transformed into human-size beach balls and eager to walk off our meal, we went to the Greco-Roman Glanum, just outside St.-Remy. These ruins, first excavated in 1921, straddle the main gap in the Alpilles chain and date back to the 4th century BC. Only a short distance away sits a 60-foot-tall Roman mausoleum, which experts say is not a tomb but a monument to the dead.

While these ruins were impressive, the real treat was the town of Les Baux-de-Provence, about 20 minutes south of St.- Remy, where a medieval fortress perches atop an almost 3,000-foot-long rock spur jutting out from the Alpilles chain. The vertical drops on either side of the castle made my height-phobic companion feel weak in the knees. The view of the valleys below is nothing short of spectacular.

Renegades lived here for many years because the spot was readily defended and proved to be virtually impenetrable. Several giant weapons, including an enormous catapult, on the slope by the fortress, make it easy to imagine a day when prisoners were pushed over the cliff. The catapult, we were told, could hurl a 60-ton boulder.

This dramatic spot draws nearly 2 million visitors a year. But in the early morning or late afternoon, the crowds can be avoided.

For our final meal in Provence, we stopped at Ravi Provencal in Maussane-les-Alpilles, a tiny town south of St.-Remy. If you make the mistake of looking for a restaurant sign, which we did, you’ll drive past this place several times, which we did. The ivy had draped itself over the sign, totally obscuring it from view. This, we had begun to think, was the way the French liked to keep their restaurants: hidden.

The lunch menu here has a three-tiered prix fixe of about $46, $35 or $25. We made one key mistake: We didn’t arrive early enough to secure a table out of the sun on the flower-filled patio. No matter, our hostess told me, scurrying away and returning promptly with a large staw hat.

The walls of the outside patio were lined with blooming orange, red and pink geraniums. A white potato vine and pink roses climbed the stone wall, leaving room for white lilies and hot-pink petunias.

To whet our appetites, the waitress brought small toast crou^tons, a magnificent olive spread and small cooked shrimp. We chose the mid-range prix-fixe menu. My friend chose the asparagus, doused with olive oil, and a tender monkfish set amid baby artichokes. I opted for fish soup, which came with more crou^tons and rouille, a spicy garnish that’s a regional specialty.

By the time my entree of tender marinated beef and ratatouille arrived, I was wishing--hat or no hat--that I was sitting in the shade. I briefly tried glowering at several couples lingering in the shade over their espressos, but intimating that a Frenchman should hurry his meal would be like asking Tolstoy to cut to the chase in “War and Peace.”

Knowing this was our last taste of Provencal cooking, we savored every bite, down to the profiterole drenched in chocolate sauce and strawberries in a wafer-thin tart crust (lunch for two: about $82).

By the time we’d paid our check, we were consumed with a new passion. We would buy Provencal olive oil. It would be our consolation prize for leaving the countryside. Our waitress gave us directions to an olive oil press that was, she said, only a short distance away. A mere stroll.

Nodding my head knowingly, I translated her directions. A left, then a right. Forty minutes later, we’d found old men playing boccie ball, a shepherd and his scruffy-looking dog tending a herd of sheep, and fields and fields of wildflowers. But no mill.

“Perhaps we should go back to the restaurant and get the car,” my friend pleaded.

“Nonsense,” I said. “If it’s here, we shall find it.”

After another 30 minutes, we found the press lodged in a 17th century building. There, workers for the cooperative extracted oil from the five varieties of olives grown in the region.

As we stood trying to calculate how many bottles we could carry, a number of local residents showed up to refill their empty jugs. This oil, they said, was the best in the area.

“Really?” my friend said, sardonically. “Then where are all the tourists?”

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GUIDEBOOK

Practical Provence

Getting there: From Los Angeles, there’s connecting service only to Nice on Delta, AOM French Airlines, Air France, KLM and Lufthansa; round-trip fares begin at about $1,120, including tax. All major car rental agencies are represented at the Nice airport.

Where to stay: Cha^teau de Roussan, Route de Tarascon, St.-Remy-de-Provence 13210; telephone 011-33-4-90-92-11-63, fax 011-4-90-92-50-59. Rates: $77-$140 per night. A 1701 converted cha^teau, 21 bedrooms, considered one of the most beautiful hotels in Provence.

Domaine de Valmouriane, Petite Route des Baux, St. Remy de Provence 13210; tel. 011-33-4-90-92-44-62, fax 011-33-4-90-92-37-32. Rates: $150-$200 per night. A 200-year-old estate, 14 rooms, 2 1/2 miles from St. Remy, in the middle of vineyards.

Cha^teau des Alpilles, Departementale Highway 31, St. Remy de Provence, 13210; tel. 011-33-4-90-92-03-33, fax 011-4-90-92-45-17. Rates: $180-$215. 15 rooms in elegant 19th century villa, five annex suites.

Where to eat: Le Bistrot du Paradou, 13125 Le Paradou, local telephone 90-54-32-70. Regional dishes; reservations a must, especially in summer.

Bistrot D’Eygalieres, Eygalieres, local tel. 90-90-60-34.

Where to buy olive oil: Moulin Jean-Marie Cornille at Maussane-les-Apilles, open 8 a.m.-noon, 2 p.m.-6 p.m. Monday to Saturday

For more information: French Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 715, Beverly Hills 90212. Open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Or fax requests for information: (310) 276-2835.