That afternoon, I explored the ramparts, looking out over the granite islets with forts built by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a military engineer for King Louis XIV. Part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, they are considered a masterpiece of military architecture.
Wandering off the main tourist streets, I stumbled upon Bouche en Folie, a quiet, intimate restaurant whose seafood-forward chalkboard menu grabbed my attention. The delicious crab fritters with lime and a monkfish meunière in lobster bisque (prix fixe, €39) felt like an ode to the ocean. In fact, the tides also drew the chef and owner, Mathieu Bouchand, and his wife to St.-Malo from Paris. “One day, we came for a walk by the sea,” he told me, and 20 years later, they’re still here.
Salted Butter and Seaweed
Butter, an afterthought almost anywhere else in the world, is a near obsession in Brittany. When you sit down at a table there, you’ll automatically get decadent salted butter that often bursts with tasty seasonings like seaweed or buckwheat. A tip from my guide landed me the next morning at the Marché de la Halle au Blé, an indoor market in a 19th-century building, in St.-Malo. My butter quest led me inside, to Fromagerie Pouilloux, whose sweet butter won me over with hints of grass and bites of coarse salt.