Stroll through the hodgepodge of pastel-striped stands in Nice’s morning market in the Cours Saleya and you’ll get a quick overview of Niçoise cuisine: socca, crêpe-thin chickpea flour pancakes sprinkled with pepper; pan bagnat, salade niçoise stuffed between an olive oil–slathered sandwich roll; pissaladière, anchovy and black olive-topped onion tart.
Chefs like Alain Ducasse have deconstructed some of these classics, serving up more elevated versions at eateries along the Côte d’Azur, while a handful of bistros in Nice’s Old Town have created market-fresh versions of the region’s specialties. As the gateway to the French Riviera, the city is often a stopover en route to Saint-Tropez or on a Mediterranean cruise, and diners can quickly check off their list of local specialties to try in as little as a morning.
Nearby port cities like Marseille have shifted from signatures like bouillabaisse as young chefs look to more modern Mediterranean fare inspired by stints around Europe. And since the pandemic, Nice’s somewhat stagnant dining scene has also started to evolve as chefs and sommeliers have moved from capitals like Paris and Rome to collaborate on restaurant concepts or open new outposts, giving the French Riviera’s capital the edge it needs to measure up to other serious culinary cities around the country.
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Guillaume Tran-tu, chef-owner of Mallard, spent nearly seven years working for Alain Ducasse’s group of restaurants, including the gilded Le Louis XV in Monte-Carlo, before launching his own venture in Nice two years ago. In addition to some of the regionally influenced dishes like barbajuans d’été (Swiss chard and ricotta-stuffed fritters), he offers a menu of French classics like saucisse maison (homemade sausage) and vol-au-vent au ris de veau (sweetbread-stuffed puff pastry), which “no one was really doing here,” says Tran-tu. “Diners weren’t looking for these ‘classics’ before the pandemic, but now they want to rediscover or revisit these dishes in a setting that makes them feel like they’re at home.”
Near the Corsica ferry dock, a duo from Rome recreated their former bistro from Italy, Epiro, which serves homemade pasta and Italian wine, while Copenhagen native Pernille Stubbs left Michelin-starred Septime in Paris, chef Bertrand Grébaut’s seasonally driven, minimalist-chic restaurant that helped birth the neo-bistro movement in France, to move south to Nice after the pandemic. She now runs the natural wine program at Babel Babel, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant and bar on the Promenade des Anglais, and will curate the European wine selection at Babel Babel’s new bar à vin, Barrique, opening in an old theatre in Vieux Nice this summer.
A Michelin-starred experience on the French Riviera
Paris-based Amour Hotels also opened its first boutique hotel outside of the capital behind the Promenade des Anglais, complete with a rooftop pool, beach club, and wine program created by natural wine superstar sommelier Vanessa Massé, owner of Nice’s Michelin-starred Pure & V, a tasting-menu restaurant helmed by Pinja Paakkonen, the former pastry chef of Copenhagen’s theatrical eatery Alchemist.
After selling Le Bistro du Fromager in Nice’s Old Town, Hugo Loubert moved over a few streets and took over a former laundromat with his brother, Grégoire, back in 2019. After working in a cheese restaurant, he wanted something entirely different and free of defined boundaries, so he launched Lavomatique, a 35-seat, small plate–focused eatery (the falafels and ribs du cochon are must-orders) that was one of the first of its kind in Nice — and inspired other spots like Vietnamese café Banh Meï.
Renaud Châteaugiron, who worked as a sommelier at natural wine–focused Clown Bar in Paris, partnered with Banh Meï’s owner, Thi-Hieu Nguyen (AKA “You”), two years ago, transforming the decade-old spot known for street food–style sandwiches and salads into a cave à manger, a wine bar with small plates. “It’s a shift being in Nice, where we need to teach people about these wines and winemakers, who are our friends,” says Châteaugiron, who sources a mix of natural sakes and wines from young and pioneer winemakers (like Caroline Ledédenté and François Grinand) in the Bugey, You’s the home region in eastern France, between Lyon and Geneva. “It’s almost like being in Paris 10 years ago — we’re doing it all over again, which is exciting.”
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(Hero image credit: babel_babel_nice/Instagram, Feature image credit: Babel Babel)
This story first appeared on travelandleisure.com
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