Petrarch, Cézanne, Virginia Woolf, Alice Waters—for centuries, people have been bewitched by Provence. But the beauty the region wears so lightly has been hard-won. Patricia Storace looks beyond the fantasy to discover the soul of the south of France

The ocher-red cliffs I see from the hotel dining-room window look like the smudges of a child's finger painting, especially when glimpsed through a shimmering double rainbow, an arc of color cutting across the sky. Here in Provence, a Roman colony for some five hundred years and still proud of this heritage, it seems appropriate to view a rainbow as a Roman architectural form, the triumphal arch.

I am at Le Phébus, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the tiny hamlet of Joucas. A pair of silver turtle doves preside over the table. Noiselessly, the server sets before me my first course, a hot cheese soup mysteriously consisting only of an egg enfolded in a tile-shaped pastry. This does not resemble soup. I compose my expression, waiting for enlightenment. She returns, bringing my companion's petits gris de Provence, those famous snails whose flesh is flavored by their diet of Provençale herbs. These delicate morsels, which the Provençal swear are superior to the more grossly plump snails of Burgundy, are so treasured they even play a role in the local Nativity scenes, in the figure of a snail seller on her way to the stable, bringing her offering to the Holy Family.

An elegant elderly couple, accompanied by a fine dog, are led to a table. They asked permission to bring the dog into the dining room, explaining that it cries piteously if left alone outside but will, they promise, sleep peacefully at their feet while they dine. Later, I hear them administer a gentle, quasi-parental scolding to the youthful sommelier, who has recommended, they feel, a bottle on the basis of its costliness rather than its rightful place within the pattern of their dinner. This is not Paris, they rebuke him. With filial courtesy, he describes alternatives. The couple remind him that they expect a good dinner to be a matter not of consumption but of conversation, not of expense but of artistry.

Now the server reappears carrying a pitcher. She stands at a precisely calculated oblique angle to the bowl before me, then pours into it a flood of hot broth. The tuile softens like a Dalí watch, and the egg flows from it, thickening the broth into a rich, integrated whole, with different textures and intensities of flavor. Variations on the theme of cheese, and a wonderfully executed piece of gastronomic theater.

Provence is a place you taste as well as see, and Le Phébus's menu—which weaves into its text bits of Provençal, a language still studied but rarely heard—is itself an excursion through the region's history, topography, economy, and, in some ways, its society. Here is a version of a classic cod dish from chef Xavier Mathieu's great-grandmother Rose. The flavor of Provence is distilled in another dish of carrots cooked in lavender-blossom honey. Fantasias are founded on the region's olives, lamb, rabbit, red mullet, and chickpea-flour panisses. A fish course is accompanied by a witty, savory play on Provence's beloved nougat, in this instance one of ricotta, peanuts, herbs, and a confit of citron. A traditional leg of lamb, cooked for seven hours, is innovatively seasoned with cumin—a tribute, I think, to the new repertory brought to the region by North African immigrants. I am reminded of the great Provençal novelist Jean Giono's definition of the gastronomic experience: "There are things which by flavor or color make you taste joy when you have them on your tongue, and others which make you taste grief. Three parts of joy, one of mourning—that is the taste of life."