Category Archives: Nice Restaurants

Restaurants in Nice, France

Best Baguette on the French Riviera

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Oh, so what. A baguette, you might think. How good could it be? It’s just bread, after all. Granted. If all you’ve been eating is that tasteless, industrial, feeble excuse for a baguette that’s on sale everywhere from supermarkets to your lesser boulangeries, I can forgive your cynicism. Reader, I submit for your consideration Le Petit Moulin, a boulangerie under the loving supervision of Christian Rassent and winner of the 2010 Best Traditional Baguette in the Alpes-Maritimes award. Where the standard baguette is crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, Mr Rassent’s loaf has a slight crispiness on the outside giving way to an airy but chewy intererior. The standard baguette is almost odorless and has a slightly cloying, immediately forgettable flavor. At Le Petit Moulin the baguette has a distinctly nutty aroma and the robust sweet/sourflavor  lingers in the mouth. It’s a bready-bread. Best of all, it lasts. The standard baguette is pretty much finished in 12 hours and is rock-hard in 24. Rassent’s bread is still delicious after days. What’s his secret? The starter dough. Eschewing baker’s yeast, this bread-man uses a sourdough starter. It takes longer but there’s just no comparison when it comes to the texture, the taste or the longevity of the loaf. Must cost a fortune, then? Not so. His loaf is a mere €1.20, only slightly more expensive than inferior bread. But you will have to go out of your way for it. Le Petit Moulin is far from anyplace a … Continue reading →

Flaveur in Nice

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Long known by the local cognoscenti, Flaveur recently burst onto a wider scene when Michelin awarded it a star only a month ago. Since then it’s been a scramble to get a reservation but oh, is it worth the wait. It clearly belongs on any list of the best restaurants in Nice. The lunch deal provided an unbelievably good value for money. For only €32, you got an starter, main course, dessert plus a glass of wine plus coffee. And the food was exquisite. We all began with a kir as aperitif and enjoyed a tiny disk of smoked haddock with a cream sauce as an amuse-bouche. For my starter, I chose the Risotto au vert / Gambas et Pétoncles / Copeaux d’asperges et citron caviar an exciting and highly original interpretation of risotto with shrimp, sliced asparagus, sprouts and peas. Each mouthful was an adventure that involved the clever combination of myriad flavors all smoothed into harmony. A crunch here, a tart touch there, a whiff of an exotic spice, an undertone of lemon; it was impossible to pin down but the result was divine. The main course was Volaille fermière rôtie sur la peau / Brocoletti et Grenobloise / Jus corsé au thym citron. The morsels of free-range chicken breast were topped with a juicy skin and surrounded by a delicately seasoned broccoli puree dotted with pine nuts and teensy croutons. The flavors were superb but the meat was a little drier than I would like. Then again, … Continue reading →

Aphrodite

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David Faure’s Aphrodite is my go-to spot when I want a truly extraordinary lunch at a price that won’t give me indigestion. I hadn’t been to this restaurant in Nice since it received its first Michelin star last year so I was curious whether the quality was the same as I remembered a couple of years agol. If anything, the restaurant had improved its lunch offering. For an inexpensive fixed-price lunch (€25), some chefs decide not to exert themselves by elaborate preparations. Not here. We began with a cool amuse-bouche of a delicate mousse punctuated with crispy paper-thin potato slice and a fresh cracker but what followed was a total triumph. Chef Faure has mastered “molecular” cuisine and the entree was a full display of his technique. Fresh peas were surrounded a chunk of quail topped  with a fois gras flavoured ice cream (who would have thought?) and then dressed up with a carrot foam that looked like a flower on the plate. Insane. The main course was a perfectly broiled cod topped with a light bath of savory sauce and complemented by fried radishes. Dessert was an exquisite concoction of violet sherbet, rasberries, mascarpone plus meringue cookies over a rasberry gel sprinkled with vanilla. Mignardises of meringue and rasberry gel completed the meal. What was great was not only the subtle balance of flavors and the summery coolness but the portions were designed to be just filling enough for lunch without weighing you down. We left neither hungry nor … Continue reading →