The most celebrated road in the United States is undoubtedly Route 66, immortalized in song and film for more than seventy years now. The French equivalent is the legendary Route Nationale 7, with an even longer lineage of appreciation. The Romans built the first roads connecting Paris to the Mediterranean, and these were periodically developed over the centuries by modernizing rulers like Louis XI, Louis XIV, and Napoleon. In 1871, the modern Route Nationale 7 was established on these ancient byways. It became the main travel route from Paris and Lyon to the Côte d’Azur, traversing some of the most beautiful regions of France before arriving at the dazzling Mediterranean coast. It acquired even greater significance in the twentieth century, as the development of mass tourism and the invention of the automobile brought unprecedented crowds to la route du soleil (the sun road). The French affection for the road is evident in the classic Charles Trenet song “Nationale 7,” which evokes its summery pleasures and closes with the joyful proclamation, “We are happy, Nationale 7.”
To be sure, the Nationale 7 did not always instill happiness in travelers. It was famous for its traffic jams and accidents, especially during busy holiday periods. But these were made more tolerable by the gastronomic delights found along its path, and indeed the Nationale 7 played a critical role in the emergence of the “gastronomad,” or gastronomic tourist—a very modern sort of traveler that unsurprisingly flourished in the bounteous French countryside.
Farmers’ stalls, traiteurs, and restaurants peppered rural France along the six hundred miles of the Nationale 7, offering delicious sustenance to weary travelers. Patisseries enticed hungry voyagers with local delicacies, such as the sweet white nougats of Montélimar or the calissons (almond sweets) of Aix-en-Provence. The melons of Cavaillon were so legendarily succulent that they were sold for miles along the roadside. (Alexandre Dumas famously gave the Cavaillon library a copy of every one of his published works in exchange for a lifetime supply of melons.) As the highway curved toward Nice, the classic flavors of Provence could be found in a slice of pissaladière, an intensely fragrant tart of onions, black olives, and anchovies. Menton, the last French town to be graced by the Nationale 7 before it crossed into Italy, was the largest producer of lemons in Europe, thanks to a splendid seaside microclimate.1
Wine lovers could visit some of the most celebrated vineyards in France, as the road threaded the Upper Loire Valley, glided down the Rhône River, and crossed southern Provence. Where there is wine, there is cheese, and many a good cheese was produced near the Nationale 7. In the Loire, a small, very strong goat’s cheese called Crottin de Chavignol was popular, despite crottin meaning “dung” (which the cheese somewhat resembled in appearance). Further south, one of the mildest of blue cheeses appeared, Fourme de Montbrison (it remains an excellent choice today for gratins and vegetable dishes). In Lyon, it would have been a shame not to try the ridiculously creamy Saint-Marcellin, or the herbed cheese dip called cervelle de canut, literally “brains of the silk weaver.” Lyon had long been a leading producer of silk, one of France’s most important luxury products, but the workers operating the industrial silk looms were subject to poor pay and working conditions.2 Their usual working lunch was a humble mélange of soft cheese, herbs, and shallots, which eventually became a local staple.
The introduction of the automobile massively expanded the potential audience for these local delicacies. The French were among the earliest pioneers of automotive technology, and in fact they consider the Frenchman Édouard Delamare-Deboutteville to be the inventor of the first automobile, in 1884 (a controversial claim due to the significant problems he experienced in actually producing and running his vehicles). By the end of the 1890s, Armand Peugeot and the Renault brothers had built and sold their first cars, and France quickly became the largest automaker in the world, producing nearly half the global total. By the eve of World War I, 100,000 cars were traversing the roads of France, a number that would rise to 2 million by the time of World War II.3
The automobile opened up all sorts of opportunities for new industries, and perhaps no one grasped this chance more successfully than the Michelin brothers, Ándre and Édouard. They owned a rubber factory in Clermont-Ferrand that already sold tires for bicycles, and they quickly developed a pneumatic tire for the first automobiles in the 1890s. Their company would go on to become one of the leading tire and rubber manufacturers in the world.
The Michelin brothers realized that if they could help expand popular demand for both automobiles and tourism, they would sell more tires. They published the first Michelin guide in time for the Paris world’s fair in 1900, and distributed 35,000 free copies to drivers. It listed sites throughout France where one could stay overnight, find something to eat, refuel the car—and, of course, find a garage to change one’s tires. It was only much later, in 1926, that the guide began awarding stars to the best restaurants, eventually settling on a formula whereby a two-star restaurant was “worth the detour” while a three-star restaurant was “worth a special trip.” This contributed significantly to the growth of reputable restaurants outside of Paris, and some of those along the Nationale 7 became famous, including La Pyramide in Vienne, La Maison Troisgros in Roanne, Maison Pic in Valence, and La Mère Brazier in Lyon. For a long time, finding a three-star Michelin restaurant that was not in Paris or near the Nationale 7 was an anomaly. Restaurateurs began anticipating the next Michelin edition with a mixture of fear and hope, as they do to this day.
Following the successful launch of the Michelin guide for France, similar guides were produced for the neighboring states of Europe, and for Algeria and Tunisia as well. Publishing was suspended during World War I, but not before the release of a new edition for western Germany in early 1915. At that time, it was still hoped that the French would be swarming into Germany imminently, and so with typical entrepreneurial optimism, Michelin decided to produce an up-to-date guide for the area (ultimately, an unwarranted one). More useful were the “battlefield guides” of the Western Front that Michelin began publishing in 1917, while the war was still ongoing, which included haunting photographs of trench wastelands and before-and-after shots of ruined landmarks. Later, during World War II, Allied forces relied on Michelin guides during their invasion and occupation of France, as their maps were considered to be the most accurate.
In the interwar period, Michelin sponsored a number of publications that encouraged French drivers to explore the countryside, using regional cuisine as an effective lure. One of the most renowned contributors to this literature was Maurice-Edmond Sailland, who wrote under the pseudonym Curnonsky. Following in the tradition of bons vivants like Brillat-Savarin and Grimod de la Reynière, Curnonsky wrote copiously on French gastronomy in humorous yet devoted fashion. In addition to penning short articles for Michelin, he wrote dozens of books celebrating the diverse regional cuisines of France (including, with Marcel Rouff, Le Tour de France gastronomique, a twenty-four-volume survey of France’s culinary wonders and gastronomic history). He obsessively explored local traditions and specialties, not just the haute cuisine of the nation’s premier kitchens, and argued passionately for their preservation as industrial food production expanded its universalizing grip.
A Michelin battlefield guide from 1919: “The Second Battle of the Marne.” It is dedicated to the Michelin workers who “died gloriously for the homeland.” Michelin, La deuxième bataille de la Marne (1919). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Unlike earlier gastronomic writers, Curnonsky was able to explore la France profonde by car (he did not drive himself but was fortunate to have a number of friends happy to serve as chauffeurs). He recognized the transformative impact of the automobile, writing that it “allowed the French to discover the cuisine of each province, and created the breed of what I have called ‘gastro-nomads.’”4 Today, we have come to take for granted the many food enthusiasts who cross the globe in pursuit of obscure and tasty dishes, but the concept of a gastronomad was still novel in the early twentieth century. Curnonsky was one of the most influential voices promoting this development, writing that “in France, tourism and gastronomy . . . are inseparable. Due to the incomparable diversity of its landscapes, its picturesque sites, and its thirty-two cuisines . . . France will always be the paradise of gastronomic tourism.”5
It remains an enduring paradox in France that while economic, political, and cultural power is overwhelmingly concentrated in Paris, most gastronomes would agree that the true heart of French gastronomy lies not in the capital but in the regions. For example, while it is common for foreigners to extol the culinary treasures of Paris, the average French person would probably consider Lyon the true food capital of France (Curnonsky even dubbed it the “world capital of gastronomy”). Many of the best-known French dishes are in fact regional specialties, including cassoulet, bouillabaisse, coq au vin, and foie gras, to say nothing of the hundreds of cheeses and wines linked to a specific terroir. The cuisines of Provence, Burgundy, Normandy—in fact, virtually every French region—are treasure troves of delicious and intriguing dishes, and their popularity today owes much to the dedicated wanderings of the first gastronomads.
The final heyday of Route Nationale 7 was undoubtedly the 1950s and 1960s, when French citizens acquired longer paid vacations and more affordable cars came onto the market. But sadly, the Nationale 7 has suffered a fate similar to Route 66, as the construction of faster highways since the 1970s has diverted much of its traffic. Many stretches have been downgraded to local roads and relabeled with new route numbers, making it difficult to follow the original road in all its glory. But those who opt for its slow-moving charms will continue to be rewarded, as many of the restaurants, markets, and small towns that made the Nationale 7 so beloved are still there. The route du soleil may have been partially eclipsed by impatient modernity, but the delectability of the French countryside remains undimmed.