Some days, everything tires you. And it is not the reading of a new book that will wake you up or the poster of a promising film. We would like to be elsewhere. At Tunis station, for example, on the tgM quay, the train which connects the capital to Carthage, Sidi Bou Saïd and La Marsa.
We would like to climb on board, strive from the show of laughing teenagers who have fun climbing the walking train and descending on the first stop, La Goulette, walking to the sea, drinking a lemonade on the terrace And let the day spend. Without doing anything other than contemplating the waves, sulling the sound of bathers.
In these days, when the spleen threatens, we can get closer to Tunisia, go as close as possible. That is to say in Marseille, at Yassine, in the Noailles district. In the rue d’Aubagne, bereaved on November 5, 2018 by the collapse of two buildings responsible for the death of eight people, lies all the complexity of the city, its sense of contrasts which is nothing new but seems to be renewed Constantly: not far from the place of the drama close the addresses in the blow, like the grocery store in the ideal or the houses of the nines, with a neat decoration, a card which is constantly renewed and an elegant clientele.
The whole Mediterranean in a bowl
At number 8 of the street, at Yassine, none of that. We sit on metal chairs, the service is courteous, without doing too much. A la carte, therefore, all Tunisia, with tuna salads, tomatoes, onions and hard eggs, fricassed sandwiches, leblebi, a very fragrant chickpea soup. And spaghetti. Yes, pasta, so common in the food of Tunisians that the latter are, by inhabitants, the second consumers in the world after Italy, according to figures from the Union of associations of EU pasta manufacturers 2017.
On the menu, we have the choice between those with seafood, meat and nature, in other words, tomato sauce. We will recommend these, at 7 euros per portion, specifying that we want them spicy, accompanied by a homemade lemonade. Less than five minutes of waiting and here we are facing a two -tone bowl, the same one found in Tunisian houses. The dish is huge, so full that one wonders if we have not ordered for two. But no, the portions are generous.
The tomato sauce mixes perfectly with pasta. Trunched green olives and pieces of chili seem to float. The first fork surprises. The spaghetti are not al dente, but melting. The sweet of the sauce is beaten by its spice. Tunisian pasta is a cross path, an infidelity made in Italy (which will get over it), a small revenge of Carthage on Rome.
Everything mixes, the softness and the lively, comfort and discovery. We are somewhere in the Mediterranean. We are in a film by Abdellatif Kechiche, Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno, when, on the beach of Sète, a whole band of friends, cousins and aunts devours spaghetti with tomatoes by exchanging gossip, stories sad and laughter. And then the bowl that we thought was infinite is empty. We get up and leave. The taste buds will burn for a long time, as if they had sunburn after a day at sea.