A small domed tourte filled with octopus in a tomato sauce sharpened with chilli and white wine, sealed under a crimped lid of slightly brioched pastry. A Sète dish, eaten cold or barely warm.
Where to eat it: 3 restaurants across 1 city.
The tielle came to Sète with fishermen from Gaeta, north of Naples, who settled the port from the 1880s onwards. The Italian original is a covered pie; the Sète version fixed on octopus because that is what the boats brought in, and on the distinctive crimped seal around the rim. It was a household recipe sold from doorsteps until the 1930s, when Adrienne Virduci began producing it commercially and the tielle became the town's emblem. Montpellier does not claim the dish, and no serious local cook pretends otherwise, but the traiteur counters in the covered halls carry it year-round.
Common allergens: Gluten, Molluscs, Eggs
Halles Laissac packs 24 traders under a rebuilt rotunda on Place Alexandre Laissac in Montpellier, oyster and tielle counters pouring wine into the evening.
Tip: Thursday is the night to come, when the halles run until 23:00 and the central tables turn into one long apéro.
Halles Castellane is Montpellier's iron-and-glass central market on Rue de la Loge, 25 stalls of cheese, oysters and produce a minute from the Comédie.
Tip: Several stalls shuck Bouzigues oysters to eat on the spot with a glass of Picpoul; go before noon for the full spread.
Halles Jacques Cœur feeds Antigone in Montpellier with 22 stalls, Tarbouriech oysters and lunch counters trading under the esplanade's neoclassical flats.
Tip: The Tarbouriech stand serves the lagoon's famous pink oysters without the drive to Marseillan; weekday lunch is calmest.
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