`Socca (No Ball Required) - Olive Oil Times
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enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Socca (No Ball Required)

By Tara Vassiliou
Aug. 28, 2012 09:20 UTC


Chez Thérèsa

‘Socca’ — is not a mis­spelling of ​“the beau­ti­ful game” but a tra­di­tional Niçois dish resem­bling a large, crispy pan­cake. Made from the most basic of ingre­di­ents: olive oil, chick­pea flour, water, salt and pep­per – it’s sim­ple to make, and deli­cious. The best way to eat it? Steaming hot straight from the oven, with plenty of pep­per and with­out cut­lery.

Socca is cooked on a flat cop­per tray in a wood-fired oven until the top is golden. The cop­per is key to achiev­ing the ideal con­sis­tency of a crispy top and a soft base.

Chickpeas arrived in Europe via Southern Italy and Spain cour­tesy of the Saracens in the Middle Ages. It was only nat­ural that this exotic ingre­di­ent be com­bined with the locally pro­duced olive oil.

Vendors with their mobile ovens were once com­mon­place on street cor­ners, sell­ing socca as a nutri­tious snack; pop­u­lar with the work­ing class with its mod­est price. While most of the street ven­dors are now gone, there remain numer­ous cafes and restau­rants in the old town of Nice that still sell socca where it’s mainly eaten as a quick lunch, or as a snack with a glass of chilled rosé.

A pop­u­lar spot for socca is at the Cours Saleya mar­ket where the tourists line up at the famous Chez Thérèsa. The ​‘vendeuse’ is easy to spot at the east­ern end of the mar­ket with her bright red lip­stick; serv­ing socca with one hand and hold­ing a cig­a­rette with the other. A word of advice: don’t go call­ing her Thérèsa. Despite her being referred to as such by numer­ous blogs and arti­cles (includ­ing The New York Times) that is not actu­ally her name — best to stick with ​‘Madame’.

Socca can also be found at ​‘Lou Pilha Leva’ (Place Centrale). This unfussy out­door restau­rant is besieged daily by long queues of hun­gry patrons eager to devour some socca as well as other Niçois spe­cial­ties. The French owner has his sights on export­ing the con­cept to the rest of the world start­ing with the United States. So, who knows, per­haps a piece of Nice, in the form of a slice of socca, may soon be com­pet­ing with pizza on the streets of New York.


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