It’s always at the end of a trip that you discover stuff you wish you’d known before. On the next-to-last day in Nice, the Accidental Locavore discovered that if you hit the good bakery just at 12:30, the baguettes are blissfully warm! If I didn’t have a lunch reservation at one of my favorite restaurants, Le Victor Hugo (another last day discovery on a previous trip), the bread would have been covered with one of several cheeses I’d collected. And if Victor Hugo was open for dinner…
Another idea that occurred to me on the way to the marché, was that I should have been looking for events etc. on Meetup. Duh. One of my goals there was to build a network, but it’s difficult when you really don’t have a starting point. I’m also used to the old France, before smart phones. People had conversations in restaurants with whoever was sitting next to them (or at least their dogs). Now everyone is so involved with their devices (also guilty) that they’re in their own little worlds (and the dogs look bored).
Checking out a couple of AirBnB apartments for future trips would have been a good idea and it would have been fun to see some real estate. There were a couple that looked good in the pictures, but I’d want to know exactly where they were before committing for a month.
My last lunch was at a tiny wine store, not far from the Promenade du Paillon, a beautifully rebuilt series of parks, dividing the old city and the beach from the rest of the city. They’ve got a great selection of biodynamic (organic) wines and a small area in the back with marble tables and funny Formica chairs you may remember from kindergarten. There’s a plat du jour but only at lunch, otherwise, it’s just cheese and charcuterie (never a bad thing). That day it was Figatellu a Corsican sausage, slightly smoked, and served over polenta, with some poivron for color. So simple and just amazing—I’ll be back!
Like tomatoes in August or wine at lunch in France, some things are just better sur place. I’ll take home with me the memories of walking along the beach by the Promenade des Anglais, hearing the tumbling of the rocks in the sea. I’ll wish I was one of the insiders at Safari, getting bisous from the waiters who have been there as long as I can remember. And if I was a resident, maybe even bisous from the women at Victor Hugo and the crew at the boulangerie.
I’ll come home and wish the potatoes had flavor, the bread had crunch and the cheese, ah well the cheese. But I’ll also know that I’ll be back, and soon!
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Well, it’s not what you think. Yes, the 
When you walk in, it’s glacial (looking, not temperature). Shiny white walls and endless rows of white freezers. There are categories for every type of international foods, with an emphasis (might be just seasonal) on Asian dishes. All I can say is that you’ll wish it was a shorter flight home and you could pack a freezer bag (they sell all different sizes) full of goodies.
One of the things I would have brought back in a flash was a big bag full of trimmed, ready to stuff, artichoke bottoms – extremely reasonable at about $8 for a kilo. There were eight kinds of mashed potatoes, from straight-up ones, to purple, truffled and more. Leeks come whole or sliced (because you know how hard it is to slice up a leek…). Dog food makes an appearance as well as that old party staple–pigs in a blanket.
I settled on a dozen escargots and some beef carpaccio. It was too warm for soup, but it would have been great when I was sick and craving soup. Even though the photo of the saumon en croûte was beautiful, but too much food and maybe a little risky for a first attempt. The other issue was that while there’s an oven here, it’s extremely complex and just getting it to microwave took me a couple of days to figure out, so if the escargots (which need a hot oven) didn’t work out, it wasn’t going to be a huge loss.
The carpaccio was pretty good and certainly easy enough to prepare. You just unwrap it, plate it and pop in in the fridge for 3 hours until its thawed. The basil olive oil sauce that came with it was fine, a little shaved Parmesan would have been lovely with it, but someone forgot and was too lazy to go get some.
The escargots were another story. I did figure out the oven and managed to cook them until they were properly bubbly and hot. The butter sauce wasn’t garlicy enough and the escargot were sort of flaccid. I ate a few, dunked a piece of baguette in the sauce and dumped most of them. Probably the soups and other less adventurous dishes are fine and if you don’t want frozen food, there are stores popping up that sell nothing but canned fish…
It started with the olives…small and green with garlic and herbs. Six, to be savored while sipping wine and waiting for the main course. Well worth searching out.
To be truthful, it actually started out the other day when the 
Le passe-plat
The veal turned out to be grilled and had that great grilled taste. The cream sauce was wonderful, with lots of mushrooms and possibly just a hint of Roquefort. There were a couple of cherry tomatoes as garnish, roasted into sweetness. And what can you say about mashed potatoes? It’s France and they were great!
Expanding on my vocabulary, I learned that the ardoise de fromages was what I was hoping for – a cheese plate, and since ardoise means slate, it arrived on a handsome slab. On the slate were a Brie, a chèvre rolled in herbs, a gooey vacherin and a semi-soft cheese like a mild Pont-l’Évêque. They were all good and worked well together and with the fig compote, but the chèvre was outstanding! Another thing to try to hunt down. I was happy and will be back to try the pot au feu soon.
