Rue Meynadier Cannes, France

Rue Meynadier is a street in Cannes, France that is riddled with historic specialty food shops and other fun shops. It’s a must see if you are in the area. If you can’t make it to the French Riveria but would love to see it, don’t worry, I got you covered 😉 .

The legendary macarons at Jean Luc Pelé are an absolute must:

So much yum!

I had to grab a few macarons.

I ate them in the car because who has the patience to wait until you get home?

I got a Speculoos macaron that was just as delicious as the crack-like cookie spread:

And, if you know anything about me, I could never pass up anything nutella flavored. So, I got a nutella macaron that made me shed a chocolate-hazelnut tear:

Anyway, back to Rue Meynadier.

They have fun boutiques with colorful beach bags and kitchen accessories:

Each shop has a specialty that they do exceptionally well.

For example, the Pêcherie Cannoise (Cannes Fishery) with cute fish guys wearing the chicest polo shirt uniforms (with the collars popped up) that I’ve ever seen on a fishmonger:

Then there’s the scary meat shop with actual ram and boar heads hanging on the wall, because why not?

Then I stumbled upon a colorful tuna shop that is famous not only for its high quality canned tuna but also for the artwork on the cans.

I love canned tuna. From eating it simply with just mayonnaise and a ton of freshly cracked black pepper or having it mixed with mayonnaise, onions and celery in a tuna melt. My Filipina friend introduced me to canned tuna with white rice and soy sauce and as horrified as I was when she handed me the bowl, I was as equally pleasantly surprised when I took a bite.

Anyway, I purchased the pre-packaged assortment of tuna to get a little taste of everything this store had to offer:

The designs on the cans were major eye candy:

There was the traditional olive oil flavor, tomato flavor, lime chile and coconut flavor, chile flavor and a terrifying Zanzibar prune flavor. I was so scared of the prune and tuna combination, I did what anyone would do, I googled it.

I stumbled across this post by David Lebovitz, where he shares his fear of opening the Zanzibar tuna can. I was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to get two cans of Zanzibar in my assortment (I think the store is trying to get rid of them).

So, I came up with an idea.

If anyone out there is brave enough to try this tuna, I will send you one can and we can open them up together (digitally, so it doesn’t matter where you are) and we can go on this exciting tuna adventure together!

If anyone is interested leave a comment and we can work out the details so I can send you this (free!) can of prune tuna and hopefully you won’t hate me for it.

I think it’s supposed to emulate North African tagine flavors of sweet and savory. I think.

I tried the regular olive oil one and it was a delight.

High-quality tuna, people.

Plus, you can’t beat the easy-open can feature.

After all this tuna talk, I’m in the mood for chocolate.

Thankfully, there was the most fantastical (it’s a real word, promise) chocolate and confections shopped called Real Chocolat:

This shop had it all, sweet liqueurs:

Oodles of nougat:

Whimsical fruit candies:

A unique selection of dried fruits:

And, the pièce de résistance, chocolate spreads that (dare I say) rivaled our lord and savior, nutella:

They had every flavor imaginable but there was one that could not be surpassed.

The salted butter chocolate spread with toffee pieces.

It was so hard to wait until I got back to the States to open it.

It was gone in a few days.

Ok, a day.

Fine, a few hours.

Moving on.

The next stop on Rue Meynadier was an amazing store specializing in olive oil:

They had a DIY olive oil bottling bar type-situation-thing.

First you pick a bottle:

Then you choose the type of olive oil you want. You can make your own blend, which is beyond cool.

I didn’t have any room in my luggage, plus I didn’t want to risk olive oil leaking all over my stuff so I decided to soothe my soul with some other little items from the store.

They had an array of spices and condiments that looked like some serious gourmet shit.

You can mix and match four items into a nicely packed, travel-safe box for 21 Euros/$28.75.

I went for things I couldn’t easily find in the States.

Tomato powder:

The tomato powder has a sort of sweet, tangy flavor. It would be perfect in homemade BBQ rubs as well as for seasoning poultry, fish and even sautéed veggies. The possibilities are endless.

I chose three condiments: an organic spicy mustard, an onion chutney and some kind of eggplant caviar.

The spicy mustard is addictive. I’ve been using instead of mustard in sandwiches and salad dressings. Definitely a winner.

The onion chutney is such a flavorful caramelized joy. The French have mastered cooking with the onion. French onion soup is just one example of such mastery. This chutney is another. It was perfection spread on a cracker with a salty aged pecorino cheese and a healthy glass of wine. I know what I’m doing tonight.

Finally, the eggplant caviar was disappointing. It had a bitter taste that made me want to chase it with some onion chutney, which I did.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the random things I saw on the fabulous Rue Meynadier: