A shop in Vieux Nice offering over 20 varieties of salt and pepper!
Provence is different, the first Province of Rome, to this day it is a cross fertilisation of French and Italian. Then if you take that rarefied sub region the Riviera, a natural sun bowl protected from the Northern climate by the Alpes-Maritimes it bears the footprints and influences of the many who have passed this way including Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks and more recently the exotic spices of the place called in Arabic, The Maghreb, “The Edge”, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Add to this pot-pourri the World and its live in companion who have followed Les Anglais here from 1860 onwards then you have an interesting mix. Then did I mention that until 1860 most of the Riviera was part of the Savoy Kingdom of Piedmont and as it supports variations on the Occitan and Ligurian dialects then you can see we are talking about a complex mix!
While many French regions will claim their cuisine is the finest in France, there's something about Provence and the Cote d'Azur that gives it an edge. Almost certainly the climate plays a part, for who can resist sitting outside a Provencal restaurant and eating a selection of the region's famed dishes. Shopping in the local markets is an experience too. One of the most famous, the Cours Saleya market in Nice, for example, is an experience that will delight any lover of fine food. But as elsewhere in France the foundation of the cuisine is good artisan ingredients au terroir, good bread and the other key components of the Mediterranean Diet, good wine, good oil and the fruits from the citrus and from the sea.
Cours Saleya market
Calamari Provencale
Restaurants in Nice range from cheap and cheerful to Michelin-starred. If your hotel or apartment is in the centre of Nice or Old Town, you will have a wide choice of where to eat in Nice all within walking distance, not including the hundreds of fast-food cafes and bars and numerous boulangeries. Ordering a carafe d'eau gets you free tap water - they prefer (obviously) to sell you a bottle of water- usually the sparkling Badoit - we've paid up to 3,50 Euros for half a bottle. If you want the free water, ask very clearly for the carafe, if you just ask for water, you'll be given a choice of fizzy 'gaz' or still 'sans gaz' and then you will feel too intimidated to then ask for the free carafe, so get the words out first!
Mr Piggy is stuffed!
Some restaurants will offer an aperitif first, so unless you want pre-meal drinks, often a 'kir' (white wine and cassis) be ready to say no, just the menu please. Alternatively, order your wine to come straight away, but if the service is slow, you may end up ordering a second bottle.
Assiete de Fromages
A cheap way to order glugging wine is to order a pitchet - this is a jug with the local house wine which can often be good and drinkable. A pichet is a litre, half a pitchet is half a litre, etc. Beer for some reason can be extremely expensive in Nice, up to 8 Euros a large glass. Stick to the house wine and a carafe of water to get the best value from restaurants. Buy beer from the local supermarket and enjoy it at your hotel or apartment before you head off to a restaurant. When you buy beer in a restaurant, there are different ways to order it, often you ask for a 'pression' which is draught beer, either a 'demi-pression'- half a litre or a 'formidable' - a litre, the name says it all. Or, order bottled beer by brand.
Gigot d'agneau
What you might consider to be the menu i.e. the list of food is called 'La Carte' and not Le Menu. Le Menu refers to a set-price meal of two or three, sometimes 4 courses. This is also known as the 'formule'. A daily special, the 'plat du jour' or dish of the day may be chalked up somewhere. The 'formule' or 'menu' with or without the 'plat du jour' will be displayed with the ordinary Carte, often on a separate piece of paper or chalked up somewhere. Ask, if you don't see it as it often gives the best value, certainly much cheaper than ordering a la carte. The plat du jour will be freshly made and the best item to order; this is often as good a way as any when choosing a restaurant; when you're strolling past a group of restaurants, just go for whatever plat du jour takes your fancy.
Salade de saumon
While aioli, Salade Nicoise, bouillabaisse and stuffed peppers are important in the local cuisine, there's much else to explore. Tripe is a local delicacy while an alternative to a fish soup is Soupe au Pistou. It's very much like a minestrone with an added sauce featuring basil, oil, cheese and garlic, a little like the more famous 'pesto' from along the coast in Liguria, Italy. Indeed, Italian favourites are everywhere in Nice. Not only is the city a short train journey away from the border, but Nice was for a long time part of Italy - albeit Piedmont as the Italian state was only a twinkle in Garibaldi's eye when the locals voted to be part of France in 1860.
Soupe de Poisson with rouille - Provençal style Fish Soup with saffron, chile mayonnaise.
Moules et Frites
Pizza and pasta are everywhere. You'll find some lovely small shops making and selling pasta in hundreds of varieties in the Old Town and elsewhere in the city. If you are self-catering, it's an ideal way to produce a fine meal, perhaps followed by a fresh fish from the many stalls surrounding the Cours Saleya. The Cours Saleya is the most famous market of Nice. The market is open every day except on Mondays when Cours Saleya has a large flea market.
Boulangerie
Though the main aisle is the most dazzling thanks to its array of colours, what really interests us is the collection of small producers’ stalls near the Rue de la Préfecture. The fruit and vegetables are not as uniformly shaped and the variety not as great, but every ingredient we will find here is firmly rooted in the region and much of it is organic. Depending on the season you might see: untreated oranges, including bitter oranges for jam real wild asparagus strawberries from Carpentras tomatoes ripened on the vine figs bursting with juice the mix of salad leaves known as mesclun (no Niçois meal would be complete without it and much more.
The truffle Menu at Le Balecon, beside the Opera House
The promenade where the market is located dates back to the sixteenth century when the town was ruled by the House of Savoy and, as Vieux Nice was largely constructed during this period, the Italian influence can be seen everywhere. The market although appears to be touristy is actually a very good value. Do try Socca is a chickpea flour pancake which is a Nicoise fast food speciality. Portions are about 2-3 Euros, sprinkle with salt and pepper and eat with your fingers.
It would be disingenuous to say that the city's old quarter, known as Vieux Nice, is lost in time, but it does remain quiet and mysterious, a place apart. In the southern part of the area you get a sense of the nearby sea, but can only glimpse it through a couple of arches in the wall. A massive church looms at the end of a street almost too narrow for two people to walk abreast. And yet, on that same street, three not-yet-teenagers zoom back and forth on skateboards, bouncing off the walls.
The five things you must try in Nice are;
• 1. Socca is a hot and crispy chickpea pancake, blackened around the edges, and custard like inside. It is the quintessential street food of Nice, baked over hot coals on enormous steel platters.
• 2. Niçoise Salad - The classic Niçoise salad includes anchovies, Dijon vinaigrette, shallots, red peppers, and other fresh vegetables. Potatoes were a later addition, as was fresh tuna.
• 3. Pissaladière - This is a tart, or pizza, topped with tasty things: Anchovies, onions, and olives. It is salty, tart, and intense. It is also a great example of how Italian and French food mingles in this seaside town.
• 4. Farcis - These are a classic specialty of Nice — vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant, and zucchini, hollowed out and stuffed with ground meat, garlic, and bread crumbs. They are baked and served hot or cold.
• 5. Rosé Wine - Rosé wine is the classic accompaniment to every summer meal in Nice. The local rosé is cheap, dry, and perfectly attuned to the flavours of the food.
So to restaurants. There is a wider and more cosmopolitan choice than you may think as a consequence of France’s colonial history. There are many Indian restaurants and in Britain we forget how extensive “French India” was. It included Pondichéry (now Puducherry), Karikal and Yanaon (now Yañam) on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast, and Chandannagar in Bengal. Indeed many of the French Indian possessions did not become part of modern India until 1963. So the cuisine is more authentic and challenging than found in Britain with its Bengali 3 pot curries and Chicken Tikka Masala brought to the UK by ship’s cooks from Cox’s Bazaar. Mostly here they are Tamils from Southern India with the wild pickles, heady spicing, use of fruit and coconut and always fish for which Southern India is famous.
The French presence in Indo-China is reflected in the many Vietnamese, Cambodian and Chinese restaurants bringing together the magical flavours of South East Asia. The diversity and cuisines of The Maghreb are well represented with the area behind Notre Dame on Avenue Jean Médecin providing a meeting place for North Africa on a Sunday morning with Moroccan and Tunisian supermarkets and Halal butchers doing a lively trade alongside the bakeries and coffee shops with their sentinels of hubble bubble Shisha pipes on the pavements outside. The other French Colonial interest of Lebanon is also represented even if the excellent one we went to at 2, Rue de Suisse at the side of Notre Dame did resplend in the unlikely Lebanese name of “Le Socrate!”
Beef or Horse?
There are haute cuisine restaurants a plenty along the Promenade des Anglais and a wide selection of other eateries around the Torinese style Place Masséna, the main square of the city, in the Old Town, by the Port and around the Cours Saleya market. However our personal favourites were on the Rue Biscarra which runs from Avenue Jean Médecin to Rue Lamartine about halfway between the seafront and the railway. Here there is a cluster of about 6 lively Bistro style establishments each offering different takes on the local cuisine. Our favourite was L’Authentic on the corner of Rue Lamartine but they all seemed good with predominately locals and French visitors enjoying the cuisine and atmosphere.
L’Authentic
Salade Provencale
The food, service and pricing (if you ordered the formule) at L’Authentic were exceptional and it lived up to its name. Order a Salade Provencale here and you ended up with a buffet on a plate. There were 4 types of Farcis, Jambon, a Pissaladière, a small goat’s cheese tart not to mention well dressed salad leaves Jerusalem Artichoke and tomato and mozzarella.
Salade de Fruits
Order a Salade de Fruits for desert and you will be astonished to be served a dinner plate with a Brick ( a light North African pastry) nest in the centre filled with wonderful homemade vanilla ice cream topped with Chantilly cream surrounded with tropical fruit dusted trickled with a coulis, dusted with icing sugar and sprinkled with chopped nuts. If anybody is on a fruit diet this would have passed muster as a sharing plate for two! Here and in the other establishments along Rue Biscarra the combination of artisan ingredients handled with respect and confidence and then served with panache to a discerning French clientele makes for a true French dining experience. Highly recommended, as they say themselves on their site but it also sums up the cuisine of this enticing area;
“Générosité, Convivialité, Simplicité et Originalité”
L’Authentic
18 bis, rue Biscarra, 06 000 NICE
www.lauthentic.com
Bon Appétit!
