Les Halles de Biarritz

This market was built on a tennis court. In eighteen eighty-five, architect Alexandre Ozanne constructed Les Halles on the site of a former jeu de paume, the real tennis game that was popular with French aristocracy for centuries. They tore down the court and put up a food market. It tells you something about how Biarritz's priorities were shifting.

Inside, one entire hall is dedicated solely to seafood. The other sells everything from Espelette pepper to foie gras to Ossau-Iraty cheese to cured Bayonne ham. If you want to understand Basque food culture in thirty minutes, this is where you come. The market is open every day from seven thirty in the morning until two in the afternoon, and during July and August, it reopens from six to nine in the evening for tapas-style eating. Those summer evenings here are special.

Now, about that chocolate you'll see everywhere in this region. The Basque Country's chocolate tradition has a remarkable origin story. In the seventeenth century, Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition settled in nearby Bayonne. They brought cocoa beans and chocolate-making expertise with them. By eighteen seventy, there were over one hundred and thirty chocolate shops in Bayonne alone. France's entire chocolate tradition in this region exists because of religious persecution driving people across the border.

The Espelette pepper is the other signature ingredient. Those dark red peppers you see hanging from building facades all over the Basque Country get their name from the village of Espelette, about twenty kilometres inland. They have their own appellation d'origine, like a fine wine.

This market is the real Biarritz. Not the grand hotels, not the casino. This is where locals actually eat.