Pampelonne, noon exactly

At Pampelonne, summer has an exact hour: the one when the basket of raw vegetables lands on the table, between crumpled linen and the salt drying on your shoulders. Club 55 never needed to decide to become a myth. It simply carried on — since the days when it fed, almost by accident, the crew of a shoot that became legend.

What the de Colmont family's house defends, season after season, holds in a few words: vegetables in a pyramid, a grilled fish, feet in the sand, and that very assured way of changing nothing. Simplicity, here, is not a style. It is a discipline.

One could spend a whole summer on this beach chasing novelty. The regulars know better: the true rendezvous stands still, at noon exactly, where the Mediterranean pretends not to have moved since 1955.