Chez Etienne — Restaurant in Marseille

First thing to know is it's cash only. If you miss this detail there is an ATM nearby due north down a very high set of stone steps.

Personally I applaud the policy. Cash keeps our earnings out of the pockets of the percentage takers.

Anyway enough of the economics lecture.

The food is wonderful. Not fancy or frilly just plain gorgeous.

The menu is simple. Another good sign. (If you go to a restaurant with 49 different dishes it's frozen boil in the bag mass produced stuff.)

The pizzas and grilled food is cooked with wood and it tastes correspondingly wonderful.

The salad is enormous and skillfully dressed and still simple.

The staff are great, with a lot of banter going on.

The place is one of the oldest restaurants in Marseilles and you can really feel that.

Somehow it has avoided pandering to tourist nicities and remains a genuine local family run restaurant.

Well done indeed.

I commend it to you.

Oh and the Tarte au pomme is the nicest I've ever tasted. Do not leave this restaurant until you...

Food was decent. Service was weirdly rude. Kind of funny at first but in the end ruined the meal. No idea what started it. We had booked. Made keen efforts to speak french which I feel went well but over all made feel very unwelcome. at the end very abruptly told cash only (which is fine but weird in 2024, but whatever, more how we were told than what we were told) spent 5 days in Marseille having wonderful meals with lovely service. Food here was fine (only tasted the pizza. Our other items didn’t arrive) but service was awful. We were so disappointed when we left. Never leave reviews but felt I should for this one…. So many wonderful places in the city, it’s got lots of other better...

It was a little difficult to get a table, but well worth it. We had read that there are no reservations and you should show up early. We were there right when they opened for dinner, but I suppose something changed recently because all the tables were reserved. We were told we could come back at 9 and try then. Around 9, a line formed outside and they would bring people in without reservations as they got tables. They only have 2 pizza flavors but both were outstanding. Then we got the fried squid that comes with salad and bread. That was the best squid I’ve had in my life. Cash only. I would highly recommend this place to anyone...