Gastronomy | Jean-François Callen’s Gazette

Created in Toulon during the 1930s, Chanteclair is a frozen coffee-praline cake traditionally decorated with a rooster in icing sugar.

Gastronomy AI-assisted text 2026-08-31By Jean-François Callen5 views

Chanteclair, Toulon’s other rooster

Created in a Toulon pastry shop in the 1930s, this frozen meringue, coffee-praline and hazelnut cake carries a rooster in icing sugar on top. Almost a century later, it is still being made in the city.

Cade belongs to the street market, while historic chichi frégi was inseparable from Cours Lafayette. Chanteclair belongs to another category of Toulon memories: Sunday lunches, birthdays and the cake collected from the pastry shop before being allowed to soften briefly outside the freezer. Created in Toulon by a pastry chef named Calvi during the 1930s, this unusual frozen dessert decorated with a rooster has survived to the present day. Unlike some other local symbols, it can still be bought in Toulon.

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Thicker and softer than Nice socca, Toulon cade is still served hot from the oven on the city’s markets.

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Gastronomy AI-assisted text 2026-08-26By Jean-François Callen9 views

Cade, the taste of Toulon! dont talk to me about socca

Born from an old connection with Genoese farinata, adopted by Toulon’s shipyard workers and once sold through the streets of Besagne, the chickpea flatbread remains one of the city’s popular symbols. And no, cade is not exactly the same thing as socca.

Four ingredients — chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt — were enough to create one of Toulon’s most familiar tastes. Brought to the harbour through Genoese workers in the early nineteenth century, cade first fed labourers before becoming a market and family tradition. Unlike Toulon’s historic chichi frégi, it has not disappeared: in 2026, it is still being baked over a wood fire on Cours Lafayette. One question nevertheless keeps returning: what exactly makes it different from Nice’s socca?

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For more than a century, chichi frégi was associated with Cours Lafayette and the Guglielmi family before disappearing from everyday life in Toulon.

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Gastronomy AI-translated text 2026-08-17By Jean-François Callen853 views

Chichi frégi: the taste Toulon allowed to slip away

For more than a century, the Guglielmi family’s hot sugared fritter was part of everyday life around Cours Lafayette. The kiosk disappeared, the family left, and later attempts at revival failed to last.

There was the Cours Lafayette market, cade, the harbour, the local accent — and chichi frégi. For four generations, the Guglielmi family was associated with the large fried pastry that generations of people in Toulon ate hot, often leaving with sugar-covered fingers. The kiosk vanished in 2010, the historic G.Toine shop closed in 2022 and a later revival also disappeared. In 2026, Toulon still remembers one of its former culinary symbols, but can no longer easily tell a visitor where to find it.

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