A weekend in South of France (and dinner at Mirazur)
- anna
- May 11, 2019
- 4 min read
A few suggestions for a long weekend in South of France.
Cote d’Azur is a great escape from the madness (and more important, the cold!) of London, being just a few hours from UK. It offers great beaches and landscapes, great restaurants and if you are lucky enough the opportunity to go to the beach in mid April! :)
A summary of our adventures (culinary and not!) with our friends and hosts Giovanni and Giulia and, hopefully, a few helpful suggestions for a weekend in this amazing place.
First day – Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Mirazur for dinner
We landed in Nice late on Friday evening, rented a car a arrived pretty late at Roquebrune cap Martin, where our friend Giulia has a super cosy and nice apartment on the beach.
After a great wake up with the sound of waves, my morning yoga practice before everyone got up and breakfast we decided to head to a nice village ~20 minutes drive from our place, called Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The place is also famous because it hosts the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, built by the renowned family of wealthy bankers.
We did not manage to visit the villa, given we did a long walk with a great view of seaside and the Cote d’Azur landscape. The weather that day was really great and sunny, with a bit of marine breeze, that made it perfect for a long walk.
After smashing a few kms to get ready and burn for the ‘big’ dinner, we went back to our base, to get ready for the dinner (not before stopping for an aperitivo in Mentone :)).
Now the interesting part :) about our experience at Mirazur. For the ones who don’t know if, Mirazur is a recently awarded 3 star Michelin restaurant in Mentone, but very close to the Italian border. The focus on the restaurant is seasonal produce, both regarding fish, vegetables and meat (consider that the chef and founder of the restaurant, Mauro Colagreco, has 3 vegetable gardens close to Mentone).
At the start I was a bit skeptical about the place, with the fear of it being a bit pretentious and with small portions. However, we were positively surprised by the fact that, in reality, the restaurant and service is very low key and the great focus worth the 3 Michelin stars is really on the quality of food.
Naturally, if you want to try it, do not expect it to be cheap, so prepare and save a bit in advance given that the only menu available for dinner is the tasting one which is 260 euro excluding beverages. However, I think all in all the price is worth it and you exit the restaurant really full!
A few highlights from our tasting menu (which includes amuse bouche, starters, 3 mains and pre-dessert and desserts), which you can see in the pictures (in order starting with the one I liked the most):
1. Spring tartelette with a snap pea purée and edible flowers
2. Albenga purple asparagus with celeriac with a white miso and asparagus purée, spinach with garlic flowers and a cream of grana padano
3. Smokes mozzarella ball as an amouse bouche
4. Homemade bread with lemon oil
5. Rose of the Mediterranean with fish carpaccio and citrus jelly and a citrus dashi
We accompanied the dinner with two bottles of wine (to share across 4 people), and the total per person resulted in ~300 euros. Which is absolutely expensive, but expected in a place like this
Overall really suggest Mirazur, the only note is about the service which was not impeccable, as it should be in a 3 star restaurant.
Second day – Turette, St Paul De Vence, La Turbie
Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough with the weather as Saturday and Sunday was pretty terrible weather-wise – with a cold and rainy day.
Given the beach was not an option, we decide to go to explore the inland starting with a small village called Turette. Even if the village is nice and very well maintained, being Sunday, almost everything was closed, including bars. In particular, this became a problem when it started pouring around lunchtime and we were forced to get into a restaurant, hoping not to be charge 30£ for a salad, just not to get completely wet! J
After the rain, we move to another place call St Paul De Vence, which is very characteristic and I really suggest it for a short visit. It has a lot of small alleys with shops selling typical food, as spices, salt de Camargue and oil; in particular, I suggest the Maison Bremond 1830, where I bough a fantastic salt with white truffle and different types of aromatic salt (with spices and with red chilli peppers).
Before dinner we stopped in a small and underground winery called Le Petite Cave De St Paul, excavated in the rocks, where we did a tasting of some good wine and the typical chips made with chickpea flour.
Finally, for our dinner we moved to La Turbie village to eat at the Bistrot Gourmand Clovis. The place is very small and cosy and we were lucky enough to find a very nice Italian waitress; the food is very focused on local produce, with a menu focused around 3 ingredients, which you can choose as starters or mains.
One starter, main and dessert will cost you 50 euros, excluding wine, which is not that expensive given the prices of the South of France area.
I chose a menu focused on John Dory, with as a starter a salad of artichokes, marinated John Dory and Ras El Hanout and as a main roasted John Dory with a seaweed pesto and dashi.
All in all, a good restaurant, but for sure a few things to work on, in particular the asparagus risotto of our friend was quite disappointing.
Third day – Run, beach and back to London!
Luckily the weather recovered from the Sunday rain and Monday turned out to be a stunning day, with 25 degrees and a full sun. So we stayed at the beach close to Giulia’s home and then went for a run (one of the worst I have done with so many stairs on the route, but really worth in terms of view and landscape!).
After a nice lunch, with salad for the girls and pasta for the boys we went sunbathing before leaving to pack everything and take to plane from Nice.
Really suggest to try these places; it was the first time for me and I really enjoyed it both in terms of landscape and local and seasonal food.
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