Two Tastes of Provence

The assignment was irresistible: travel to Provence and dine well. Well, that's not as straightforward as it sounds. In the decade since Peter Mayle penned A Year in Provence, tour buses, gridlock, and gripes about bad cooking have beset the region. But I devised a simple strategy: follow Mayle's footsteps. The British author, who four years ago fled Provence for New York's Hamptons, has returned, this time settling in the picture-perfect, 16th century village of Lourmarin.

So I set off for this village of 1,000, half an hour north of Aix-en-Provence, to see if I could find the Provence evoked by Mayle's paean to sun and olive oil. Lourmarin, which rests in a valley amid fields of cypress, sunflowers, and rosemary, recently has gone upscale. It now boasts art galleries, antique shops, and yes, a slew of restaurants, two of which are genuine gems.