Club 55

Club 55 is the oldest of the Pampelonne beach clubs and still the least showy. It began in 1955 as a family kitchen feeding the crew filming on the beach, and it opened to the public from there; the same family has run it ever since and the deliberate plainness is the point. There is no glassed-in dining room and no pool. You get wooden tables under bamboo and tamarisk, a sand floor, mattresses and parasols out on the beach, and a small shop selling the club's own kit. The food follows the same logic: the basket of raw vegetables with anchoiade that lands on every table, grilled fish, tomato salad, nothing that needs explaining. Lunch is the main event and easily runs past four in the afternoon. Prices are charged per item rather than as a package, so a mattress, a parasol and a straw cabana are all separate lines. Practicalities are handled well, with parking and valet, showers, wifi, water sports and a boat shuttle for arrivals from the gulf. Booking is essential in summer and the club has been notoriously hard to get into for decades. The season is long by Pampelonne standards, running from late March until the start of November.