A long ridged doughnut of wheat and chickpea flour, fragrant with orange-blossom water, deep-fried in olive oil until shatteringly crisp and rolled in caster sugar. The L'Estaque seaside snack since 1907.
Where to eat it: 3 restaurants across 1 city.
Chichis frégis were popularised in 1907 by Alexis Guglielmi in Toulon and migrated up the coast to L'Estaque in the 1930s, where the fishing-village stalls turned them into the canonical Marseille beach snack. Chez Magali, run by the Magali Pisciotto family, still cooks them in 20-litre olive oil cauldrons at the L'Estaque seafront. The Sunday-afternoon queue is unchanged across generations.
Common allergens: Gluten
Tip from the editors. The orange-blossom water is the Marseille signature; do not skip it. The dough must drop heavily off a spoon; if it is stiff you get bread, not chichi.
Chez Magali in Marseille's L'Estaque port serves fried chichis and panisses by the dozen since 1947, paper cones eaten on the beachfront seawall.
Why locals love it: Tourists rarely make it to L'Estaque port; locals have eaten Magali's chichis here for 78 years.
Tip: Cash only; chichis straight from the oil, panisses by the dozen in a paper cone.
Chez Sauveur in Marseille's 1er Noailles has cooked Sicilian-rooted Marseillais pizza since 1943, the Pizza Speciale around €15, the cheapest wood-fired.
Try: Sicilian wood-fired pizza
Tip: Closed Sunday and Monday; takeaway saves the queue at peak Cash is faster than card.
Marche aux Poissons in Marseille's 1er on the Quai de la Fraternite is the city's last working fish market, around ten stalls each morning selling whatever.
Tip: Open daily 8am-1pm; pack-up around 12:30, the rascasse and scorpion fish go first.
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