What are the motifs in Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle?

The Frenchman's love of food and drink is a recurring idea in this book. Mayle learns that twenty percent of the French population is plagued with chronic constipation. He deduces that these epidemic-like numbers are due in part to the Frenchman's love of rich food and robust drink.

When an English friend asks Mayle to obtain a large off-season quantity of a favorite French delicacy, the dark truffle, Mayle learns that the truffle business evokes strange behavior from the French. The chef who Mayle contacts is at first reluctant to do such a favor for an Englishman, even though he would make a good profit. After reluctantly hunting down the delectable fungi, the chef sets up a secret rendezvous at a pay phone booth to make the exchange. A gang of thieves color inferior Italian white truffles with dark walnut dye in order to pass them off as the French delicacy and sell them to, of all people, a Frenchman.