There are two small islands off the coast of Bandol, an hour and a half west of Saint-Tropez, that almost no one outside the South of France has ever heard of. They were bought in the early 1950s by a man named Paul Ricard, who had grown wealthy selling the yellow aniseed apéritif that bears his name, and who decided, for reasons he never fully explained, to preserve them.
He succeeded. Seventy years later, Bendor and Embiez are, in any meaningful sense, the same islands he left behind. No high-rises. No promenade. No traffic. There are restaurants — three on Bendor, four on Embiez — and a small handful of hotels, all owned by the foundation that inherited the islands from the family and operates them on a not-for-profit basis. The economics are unusual. The result is more so.
I take guests there twice a season, usually on the way back from Marseille, sometimes as a deliberate day trip from the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. They are the part of the Côte d'Azur I have never had to disappoint anybody with.
Bendor — the seven-minute crossing
You park in Bandol and take the small ferry, which leaves every half-hour and crosses the channel in seven minutes. The boat is the same shape it was when Ricard ran it himself. The crossing costs, at last count, less than the espresso you will drink on arrival.
Bendor is small — you can walk around it in twenty minutes — and entirely walkable. The buildings are low, painted in the muted ochres and chalk-whites of the southern Mediterranean coast, and the centre of the island is a cluster of small artists' studios that Ricard installed in the 1960s and that have, against all odds, remained. There is a museum of wines and spirits, more interesting than it sounds, with a collection of eight thousand bottles that traces the global history of distillation. There is a serious cellar, the Cave Centrale, where you can taste the Domaines Ott rosés ten minutes from the vineyard.
Lunch at Le Delos is the right call — the island's reference table for sixty years, terrace, grilled fish, white tablecloths, Provençal wine. The bill is half what the same lunch would cost in Saint-Tropez. The view is, in many respects, better.
Embiez — the older sister
Take the bus or the car back from Bandol to the small port of Le Brusc, in Six-Fours-les-Plages, and from there a second ferry — twelve minutes — to Embiez. The second island is larger, wilder, and the more interesting of the two.
Embiez has its own marina, a Mediterranean ecology institute set up by Ricard's foundation, and a network of small marked paths that loop around the perimeter of the island past three small calanques where the water is the colour of the gulf in a Hockney. There are no cars. The principal hotel, the Hôtel Hélios, is a 1960s Mediterranean modernist building of the kind that has been entirely erased from most of the French coast — sixty rooms, a Paul Ricard suite, low ceilings, white plaster, sea-facing balconies, the kind of restraint that is, in the right light, the entire point.
The principal restaurant, Les Jardins d'Hélios, is run by Nicolas Ballin, who arrived from Paris in early 2024 — Le Jules Verne with Ducasse, then Guy Martin — and has quietly turned the island's kitchens into one of the more serious operations in the western Var. The sea bass is the sea bass. The Bandol rosé is the Bandol rosé. The bill is honest.
What you do for a day
Take the eleven o'clock ferry from Bandol. Walk Bendor in the morning. Lunch at L'Espadon. Cross to Embiez after a coffee. Spend the afternoon walking the perimeter of the island and swimming at the southern calanque. Apéritif on the terrace of the Hélios as the light leaves. Either stay the night — the hotel is, frankly, excellent for what it is — or take the last ferry back to the mainland at nine.
The total cost of the day, for two people, including lunch, a bottle of wine, and the ferries, is roughly the price of a single bottle of rosé at one of the Pampelonne beach clubs.
Why this matters
The South of France that most American visitors see is the South of France that has been built for them — the beach clubs, the restored hotels, the helicopter circuit between the Côte d'Azur and the Var. It is excellent. It is also, increasingly, a version of itself.
The Ricard islands are not. They are the version of the coast that was decided, by one man with an apéritif fortune and an unusual idea about preservation, not to be sold. Seventy years later, they are the last place on the French Mediterranean where you can spend a day, eat properly, swim in transparent water, sleep in a serious hotel, and pay what these things actually cost.
I would not send my closest American friend to the Riviera for the first time without giving them the address.
— Camille Vedy
