Anthony Bourdain: “I should point out that every single Frenchman, when I say, ’I’m shooting in France,’ they go, ‘Oh really? Where?’ And I say, ‘Marseille.’ Their face drops immediately, like, ‘Oh.’”

No regrets. Non, je ne regrette rien. Alors, I don’t regret anything.

Tony Bourdain’s sojourn to Marseille, France, for the second episode of Parts Unknown’s sixth season was a marked departure from the news-driven outings that preceded it, the previous season’s season-ender in Beirut, Lebanon, and the previous week’s season opener in Havana, Cuba.

The emphasis this time was back on food and having fun in an exotic destination — back to Bourdain’s roots, in other words — but it was more than that. It was a chance to renew his lifelong bromance with chef Eric Ripert.

The episode, co-produced and directed by Cuba’s Toby Oppenheimer, opens with the two of them regarding each other — un certain regard — looking strikingly alike, in neatly pressed long-sleeved white shirts, two full heads of white hair — si viril! — and near-identical shades for the bright Mediterranean sun — élégante, naturellement.

Then, after a pause, “I need a French coach,” Bourdain says — ironie! As if.

As if Bourdain needed coaching in anything, let alone how to blend in with the local colour and get along with the locals in an unfamiliar setting. Welcome to Marseille. Somehow I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

Bourdain never really lost touch with his French roots, after all.

Bourdain is a French name; he first took an interest in food when, as a child during a family trip to France, he ate his first oyster. Qu’est-ce que c’est la? Whatever it was, it tasted good, and worth looking into further — though at that age Bourdain was too young to seriously consider his future life choices.

On one level, it’s easy to think of Ripert — a successful chef, optimistic, a practicing Buddhist, laid-back in that live-and-let-live Buddhist way, without a single bad word to say about anyone, a point Bourdain mentions frequently, with no small amount of wonderment, throughout the episode — the philosophical and emotional ying to Bourdain’s yang.

During Marseille’s early moments anyway, the pair are peas in a pod, petits pois dans une cosse, pun intended.

Peas have a special place in French culture, after all. They were one of the earliest food crops to be cultivated—Marseille, despite its coastal Mediterranean setting, is anchored in a rural region where agriculture plays an important role in the local economy—and Charlemagne, the 8th-century French emperor, not the American rapper and radio host, planted and nurtured peas in his royal garden.

And cheese. Must mention the cheese.

There’s a virtually moveable feast of cheese throughout the episode, and small wonder. Bourdain and Ripert both dote on cheese, in all its guises, and the Marseille region is famous around the world for its wide variety of quality cheeses, in ways France’s neighbours can only dream of. Legend has it that the famous English comedy troupe Monty Python took one look at Marseille and thought to themselves, ’ To hell with British politics, what we really need is a sketch about a cheese shop.’

Make it so, and let it be.

What makes Marseilles stand out, watching it today, knowing what we now know — it first aired on CNN in October 2015 — are the poignant moments toward the middle and again at the end of the hour when Ripert, arguably one of Bourdain’s closest friends and confidants, if not his closest, and Bourdain discuss the meaning of life, where things go from there, and the perfect exit.

“I could retire here,” Bourdain says.

“I could retire here, too,” Ripert replies, even though he’s admitted, moments earlier, that he’d never been to Marseille before his bromantic get-together with Bourdain — this was his first visit — despite growing up no more than 50 miles away.

(It’s hard to believe, that, the part about growing up just 50 miles from France’s second-largest city but never once actually going there, not even for a visit.)

“I could live here,” Bourdain says. “Just me and my watercolours. … That’s the measure of a place, for me; if you start thinking thoughts like that when you retire, are you going to just putter?”

Ripert: “What’s putter?”

Bourdain: “Dicking around. Doing nothing. Basically, you wake up, and maybe you paint a little.”

Ripert: “I could paint.”

Bourdain: “Do you know how to make a sweater?”

Ripert: “I would like to go fishing. You know, I’ve never caught anything in my life.”

“Do you actually fish? Do you know how to fish? Do you ever fish?”

“I don’t know how to fish.”

“I'll show you how. All you need is a car battery and a couple of cables. Trust me, you get all the fish you want.”

“That’s—”

“How do you say ‘dynamite’ in French?”

“Dynamite.”

“Dynamite. See, I do speak French! You can tell ..,. you know what’s coming, right? You can sense it. Oh, no. Another fishing scene.”

Bourdain tells Ripert that, when filming Parts Unknown and No Reservations before that, he never once had a fishing scene that worked the way it was supposed to. (Fellow Bourdain watchers: Remember Sicily?)

“This must be my 12th fishing scene. No, I must have done 20 fishing scenes in my life. And I think I had one good day out of all of them. Other than that, it's been one humiliating goat rodeo after another.

“Ordinarily, our typical fishing scene actually would be … it would be rougher than this. So we're pitching back and forth, and I'll be hanging on to the contents of my stomach only by realizing that (the camera dudes) feel even sicker because they have to look through the viewfinder. … Basically, you're playing this sort of race-against-time kind of game.”

No matter. Peu importe. They go fishing anyway, just Bourdain and Ripert together, a scene from a buddy movie, with an expert handy with a long-line reel and a reputation for catching a fish no matter the conditions.

It ends badly.

“This is the worst,” Bourdain says.

“This is the worst,” Ripert agrees.

“Well, there it is,” Bourdain says, for the benefit of the cameras and you, gentle viewer.

“Another extraordinarily successful fishing scene in the can. Time to reap the rewards waiting for us back on dry land.”

It’s Marseille. There are always culinary rewards waiting on dry land.

That cheese, for one. And red wine.

“Oh, look at that,” Bourdain says, of the cheese. “Oh, man. I love. Cheese like this. It’s incredible. Oh, yes.”

“It is exceptional,” Ripert says, and he would know. “Life is good.”

“It’s very good in Marseille,” Bourdain says.

At least it was, if only for a moment.

Bittersweet. Poignant. A lovely episode. Spéciale. Vraiment.