The Socca Pilgrimage

Socca is the street food of Nice reduced to its absolute essence: chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt, mixed into a thin batter, poured onto a massive round copper pan and baked in a scorching wood-fired oven until the top blisters and the edges crisp while the centre stays soft and custardy. It comes out on a board, gets a crack of black pepper, and you tear it with your hands and eat it immediately - it doesn't wait. The flavour is nutty, earthy, faintly sweet from the chickpea, with the olive oil and char doing the rest. It exists in variations across the Ligurian coast (farinata in Genoa, fainá in Argentina), but Nice owns the name and the tradition.

Nice already has salade niçoise on this site; socca is the other side of the city's food personality - not a composed restaurant plate but a smoky, cheap, standing-up, market-stall experience. The spiritual home is Chez Pipo in the Port area or the Cours Saleya market, where vendors have been making socca on the same pans for generations. It costs a couple of euros, it's entirely vegan without even trying, and it tastes of sun-warmed chickpeas and olive oil in a way that belongs completely to this stretch of coast.