Where to Eat in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
View of the Hôtel de Ville in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. July 20, 2025.
Very rarely do I travel somewhere without a few restaurant recommendations, whether for picking up food to eat in our base of stay, while out seeing the sights, or for having lunch or dinner during the day.
However, none of my research prior to heading to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence turned up any food recommendations that I felt I could unequivocally trust. That meant, upon arrival, we had to somewhat blindly forage for ourselves.
There are dozens of restaurants in the small town, but I’ve learned well enough through my travels that you can’t trust the quality of a restaurant by its exterior and that you rarely find the best restaurants on the main drags. So how were we to find the good ones?
Shockingly, for the first time in my memory, we almost couldn’t go wrong in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Though we ate at a few duds (and you can rest assured that I didn’t list those here), we more often than not tumbled into restaurants with a welcoming staff and delicious food.
So if you prefer to experiment rather than take suggestions, you probably won’t land on a disappointing meal during your visit to this small town in Provence. But if you, like me, prefer to saunter into town with at least a few recommendations from trusted sources, here are my pointers for the best of the best we found, in alphabetical order.
Bistro des Alpilles
One of our traveling companions had a serious craving for a specific dish, which launched a quest far and wide to find a place that offered it. (You know the story: When you want something, you can never find it, even though you’d seen it absolutely everywhere beforehand.)
Just before deciding to give up and just pick a place already, we found the Bistro des Alpilles. The rest of the group (including me) would have eaten almost anywhere at this point, so I didn’t give the menu more than a cursory glance before we asked for a table. It had what our quester wanted, and that made it good enough for me.
Color me surprised then, when what I thought would be a pretty basic dinner option—a plate of cut fruit and prosciutto off the regular menu—came from the kitchen bursting with contrasting flavors, teeming with lusciously ripe fruit and giving me just enough cured ham to provide the perfect counterpoint of salty. Even better, the restaurant had sized it well enough to leave me satisfied, not still hungry.
Brasserie du Commerce
Expect hearty and delicious fare at Brasserie du Commerce near the carousel in town. You’ll get a warm welcome from the friendly staff, too.
I hesitated at first over what to order off the menu and thought I’d taken a risk ordering tuna steak and vegetables; most restaurants seem incapable of cooking tuna steaks well. Nope. The tuna steak arrived perfectly cooked and in plentiful proportion next to a sizeable serving of vegetables, an area where restaurants tend to skimp. (Who else gets annoyed when the side of vegetables includes three green beans and one tomato?)
My dining companions had equally delicious meals, including a steak frites order with the steak cooked exactly to the point requested—and that’s saying something when it comes to my highly picky spouse who likes his beef bloody.
La Cantina
Our traveling companions had tried La Cantina one night without my spouse and I and they’d praised it highly, so we all four decided to go back on another night.
Now, I love a good pizza. Thing is, I have high pizza standards. I’ve had very few excellent pizzas in my life, a good number of very good pizzas, and quite a lot of pizzas barely worth the name.
La Cantina surprised me, then, when it served up a decadent antipasti platter teeming with cured meats and roasted vegetables and a tender-crusted Neapolitan-style pizza very much worth the name.
Tom & Joh
I cannot recommend this little take-away spot enough. (They do have a couple of seats at a counter, if you need to eat on site.) Once we tried Tom & Joh, we stopped in for lunch, dinner, or snacks almost every single day for the rest of our stay in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
You won’t find a single run-of-the-mill sandwich or salad on offer at this little shop created and operated by a brother, sister, and sometimes their mom. The combinations of flavors and tastes, all with hand-selected, top-notch ingredients, blew away anything I can remember finding in the south of France (or maybe anywhere?) so far.
They have a few ready-made salads and sandwiches in their display, but they often make them fresh for you when you order and will modify the ingredients as needed to suit your palate.
Their delicious salads, sandwiches, and desserts are perfect for picnics while you tour the area or simply enjoy a quiet evening in your hotel or rental apartment.
Surprisingly Nice Eats for a Base of Stay!
We chose Saint-Rémy-de-Provence as a base of stay for visiting the region for its convenient location relative to the sites we wanted to see on day trips.
We wouldn’t have stayed there, though, if it didn’t have all the amenities we seek in a base-of-stay location, including solid food options.
On that count, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence turned out to be a base of stay that exceeded the our expectations. Has to say something that I so enjoyed the food I forgot to take even one picture of it, right?