With its long coastline and unequalled sardines, France’s laid-back Vendée region is the perfect place to indulge in the culinary pleasures of the sea, says Rufus Purdy
For some reason, I’ve been left in charge of the tiller. The people who actually know what they’re doing are lounging at the front of our small yacht with their feet up on the sides, chatting about house prices in French. Don’t they know my experience with boats extends only as far as a bit of dinghy-paddling off Hove beach? And haven’t they noticed that, so far on this stuttering, jerky journey into the Atlantic, I seem to be taking to the water like a duck to industrial engineering?
The ocean around me, though, is mercifully empty – no other boats to crash into, no rocks to crunch against – so maybe the laissez-faire attitude of my fellow matelots is justifiable. And by the time another craft does draw near, I’ve grown confident enough to steer away smoothly and avoid tipping the crew overboard.
I hear that fishing boat before I see it. Well, the squawk of the thousands of seagulls that follow it, anyway. And when the blue-and-white vessel gets closer, with the birds behind jostling in the air to get as near as they can, I’m mesmerised. I’ve seen birds follow trawlers before, but never on this scale. The patch of sky in the craft’s wake swirls with so many whites and greys that it looks as though it’s been pixelated by an over-zealous censor. One of the crew at the front of the yacht turns and looks at the spectacle. ‘Ah, the gulls,’ she says. ‘They love the sardines, no?’
SARDINE SWEET SPOT
They’re not daft, those gulls. The waters I’m doing my best to navigate are within a line-cast of Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie: the sardine equivalent of what Camembert is to cheese. And it’s something of a ‘Goldilocks’ zone. Go further north and the sardines’ fat content increases in colder water, so they become flabbier and less tasty; go south into warmer waters and they become leaner and nippier – great if you’re trying to escape from a baleen whale, not so good if you’re the catch of the day.
I’d experienced the delights of this catch the previous evening, at Le Banc des Sardines (le-banc-des-sardines.fr) – a tiny shack between Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie train station and harbour. Seated at a pub-style table, drinking rosé from a paper cup, I enjoyed a starter of sardines mixed with garlicky cream cheese, served in a sardine tin with a basket of sliced baguette and a wooden knife. The deep, earthy flavour of the garlic combined wonderfully with the sharpness of the fish – the bread disappeared quicker than a herring down a sea lion’s throat.
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