Let me tell you something about moving to France.

Everyone assumes you arrive, take one bite of a croissant still warm from the boulangerie, and immediately forget everything you ever loved about home. The coffee, the comfort food, the particular kind of joy that comes from eating something deeply, unashamedly unpretentious.

Everyone is wrong.

I have lived on the Côte d'Azur for years. I have eaten at tables that would make a food critic weep. I have drunk rosé watching the sun drop into the Mediterranean. I have genuinely, completely fallen in love with French cuisine.

And I still make poutine. From scratch. Including the cheese curds.

Especially the cheese curds.

For the uninitiated: poutine is Canada's greatest contribution to world cuisine and the dish most likely to confuse a French person at first glance. It is french fries, topped with fresh cheese curds, drowned in hot gravy. It is magnificent. It is not elegant. It does not care that you're in Provence.

When I first started making it here, the reaction from my French circle was... diplomatic. There were raised eyebrows. There were polite questions about the gravy. There was a specific look that I have come to recognise as "I respect your culture but I have concerns."

And then there was Ludo.

Ludo, who is French, who grew up in a country where cheese is practically a religion and has its own course at dinner — Ludo took one bite and never looked back. He is now, by any reasonable measure, a poutine convert. A devotee. He has opinions about the gravy-to-curd ratio. I have created a monster, and I couldn't be prouder.

The cheese curds are the part that stops most people outside Canada. You can't just buy them anywhere in France — the texture, the fresh squeaky bite, the way they soften just enough under hot gravy without completely melting — that's not something you find at the supermarché.

So I make them myself.

It's not complicated once you know how. Fresh milk, a little patience, the right temperature — and suddenly you have something that tastes like home in the middle of the Alpes-Maritimes. I'm not going to pretend it isn't a small act of stubbornness. It absolutely is. But some things are worth being stubborn about.

Here's the thing I've realised after years of living abroad: the food you miss most isn't always the fanciest thing you've eaten. It's the thing that meant comfort. Saturday afternoons. Cold weather. That specific feeling of everything being right with the world.

For me, that's poutine.

And I think about this a lot when I'm helping people find the right rental on the Côte d'Azur. Because a holiday isn't just about the view from the terrace — though the views here are extraordinary. It's about feeling at home somewhere new. Waking up in a kitchen that works. Having space to breathe. That moment when an unfamiliar place stops feeling foreign and starts feeling like yours, at least for a week.

That's what I try to find for every person who comes to this site.

Except the poutine. That part you'll have to make yourself.