"Dinner comes with a spectacle in La Tremblade. Before I sit down to a platter of oysters at La Cabane des Bons Vivants, one of the village's canal-side restaurants, I stand and watch orange flames bellow up from a tangle of long, skinny pine needles inside a large, open oven. They are piled on top of a board of carefully arranged mussels and, by setting fire to the pine needles, the shellfish cook in their own juices."
"This is the curious tradition of moules a l'eclade, a novel way of cooking mussels developed by Marennes-Oleron oyster farmers along the River Seudre in the Charente-Maritime, halfway down France's west coast. The short-lived flaming spectacle is a prelude to sliding apart the charred shells and finding juicy orange molluscs inside and just one highlight of our evening along La Greve."
La Tremblade stages moules à l'éclade, where pine needles are set alight over boards of mussels so the shellfish cook in their own juices. Canal-side restaurants and an avenue between oyster beds provide sunset meals amid colourful huts and rustic pontoons in an active oyster-farming village. The area sits in Charente-Maritime near the Gironde estuary, south of Île de Ré and La Rochelle, with nearby towns such as Royan and a base in Etaules. Royan's Marché Central, completed in 1956, features a 50-metre-span dome lit by skylights and offers a wide range of local produce.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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