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Back in Nice, France Part 9 - good food in Aix-in-Provence

Last summer we sent two weeks in Aix-in-Provence, France, a university town of about 145,000 people, located just over 100 miles from Nice by train through Marseilles.   Aix is a beautiful town with modern architecture, especially in its art complex, which is home to the annual art festival, devoted primarily to opera but also includes orchestral and vocal concerts. 

Aix is also a great place for food!   Some of your favorites restaurants:

Chez Jo was the first restaurant we tried on arrival in Aix and we made it a regular stop over our two-week visit.   Chez Jo is known for their steaks and pizzas, cooked in a hot oven located in the middle of the dining room.   I think I had a steak each time we visited.  They are prepared to order, along as the order tends to be medium-rare and come with great fries and salad.   If you eat inside, you can watch the steak master prepare your meal, but it’s more fun to sit outside and watch the street traffic going by the small square where the restaurant is located.  Plus on a warm summer day, the inside can get a little warm with the large oven in the middle of the room.  Chez Jo is located at 59, rue Espariat (+ 33 04 42 26 12 47, www.pizzeriachezjo.com).

Just off the Place des 4 Dauphins, easily identifiable by the fountain with four dolphins in the middle of the square, is the restaurant Jardin Mazarin, also identifiable by its purple welcome mat.   Go through the restaurant and eat in the small secluded garden with gurgling water and lots of greenery.   The artichoke hearts are perfectly prepared and the nice size duck breast come with a large piece of sautéed foie gras sitting on top.  I am a foie gras, fan and this was one the largest pieces I have ever been served.   Linger around with your wine and have a nice long relaxing meal in a very tranquil setting.  Jardin Mazarin can de found at rue du 4 September (+33 4 42 66 05 31, www.jardinmazarin.com).

The Gallifet Art Center is a contemporary art museum, located a few blocks south of Cours Mirabeau in the heart of Aix.   It is open for light lunches in its large courtyard in front of the main building.   It’s a beautiful setting to enjoy a soup and salad and nice fresh tarts and pastries.   On certain evenings during the summer they serve dinner along with a live festival of ‘arty jazz’.   Gallifet is at 52 rue Cardinale (+33 9 53 84 37 61, www.hoteldegallifet.com).

About a half mile north of downtown Aix in a large rectangular town ‘square’ with about dozen restaurants and bars situated down the middle of the square and along the perimeter.   It seems to be a hangout for college students but has some very nice restaurants, both fancy and not-so-fancy.   One of our favorites is Chez Laurette closer to the eastern end of the square.   It is known for excellent seafood and some of the best escargot I had on this trip.   TripAdvisor has a mix of reviews, but I thought it was a great find for a very nice lunch.  The address is 6 Forum des Cardeurs (+33 4 42 96 95 40). 

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Back in Nice, France Part 8 - more restaurants along the coast

There are many little towns spread across the Cote d’Azur and they each have amazing restaurants.   Here are three more of our favorites.

In the town of Vence, not to be confused with the more touristy nearby town of St. Paul de Vence, sits Le Pigeonnier, a restaurant with about a dozen table in a nice size square in the middle of town.   We have been taking the hour long bus ride from Nice up to Vence for about ten years now and always have lunch at Le Pigeonnier.   The best thing on the menu is the daube, a beef stew served in a small cast iron pot.  They also have fresh fish and pasta.  For dessert have the profiteroles, a pate choux pastry stuffed with whipped cream and covered in chocolate sauce.  You can find Le Pigeonnier at 3 Place Peyra (+33 4 93 58 03 00)Along the coast from Nice toward Monaco is the tall town of Eze.   The bus from Nice drops you off at the bottom of the town and it is a long walk up through the town to the tropical garden at the top.   Along the way you pass Chateua Eza, a small hotel with a restaurant with absolutely beautiful views of the Mediterranean and far off St. Jean Cap Ferrat, a beautiful peninsula jutting out into the sea.  Chateau Eza is a fancy restaurant.  Service is impeccable.   Have a glass of champagne and enjoy the scenery.  Then follow the recommendations of your server and enjoy one of the best meals you can imagine.  Try the carrot medley, yes, it has carrot sorbet, and the duck breast, a thin rare delight.   All of the desserts are perfect.  End with coffee before you tear yourself away from the view.  Chateau Eza is located at 22 rue de La Pise (+33 4 93 41 12 24, www.chateaueza.com).

Another beautiful area is St. Jean Cap Ferrat, that peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean.   In the little town walk down to the harbor and where you’ll find about twenty restaurants lining the port.  This time we ate at Brasserie La Goelette.  Great seafood of all kinds and you can’t beat the view of the harbor and the surrounding hills.  La Goelette is located at the Port Saint Jean (+33 4 93 76 14 38).

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Old Miami News Photos

Run down to the History Miami Museum and see the 20ish-photograph outdoor exhibit of journalistic photographs for the old Miami News.  Located in the plaza between the North and South buildings these are large, maybe 3 foot by 5 foot, black and white photos that document some interesting Miami history.   According to the exhibit, the Miami News had been Miami’s evening newspaper.  It ceased publication at the end of 1988 and about 2 million photos and negatives were donated to the History Miami Museum.  Some of my favorites are of the Miami Vice TV show actors Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas playing checkers in 1984,  Santa arriving by blimp in 1972, elephants parading across Venetian Causeway on their way to the Miami Convention Center In 1986, and a pro-Vietnam march down Flagler Avenue in 1965.  It’s a great slice of Miami history and a group of photos documenting unique Miami events.  I’m not sure how long the exhibit will be there, so head on down soon.

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Back in Nice, France Part 7 - More Restaurants in Nice

Here are three more of our favorites restaurants in Nice. 

Along the far side of the port away from downtown, there are about a dozen primarily seafood restaurants lined along the quai.   One of our favorites for good, fresh seafood is La Barque Bleu.  It calls itself an Italian and pizza restaurant, but we always go for the fresh fish.  It is a comfortable place with a nice outdoor area along the harbor.   They show you your fish before it is cooked and they serve it fileted with, usually, just some lemon and a few vegetables.   It’s a nice place to sit and watch boats motoring in and out of the harbor.  La Barque Bleu is located at 7 quai des Deux Emmanuuels (+33 4 93 55 39 74).   It’s the best fresh fish along the port.

In the heart of the old town is a very nice Italian restaurant, La Griglia.  It’s a small narrow place so it is easy to miss.  It is family run and has excellent fresh pasta and grilles meats and fish.  We’ve eaten here two or three times and it is always pretty empty, which is difficult to understand given the excellent Italian food served here.   Last time we were there, I had the baked whole daurade fish, which was served whole on a plate.  But it was very easy to filet.  The pasta with seafood is also delicious.  If you linger, they may offer you a little lemoncello!  La Griglia is located at 33 rue Pairoliere (+33 9 82 57 38 83).

Our arrival to Nice each year, is usually in the evening, so our first meal is traditionally at La Pizza Cresci along the pedestrian area just west of Place Massena.  It may not be the best pizza you’ve ever had, but it’s a fun place to hang out.  It’s always crowded.  In fact it can hard to get a table at peak eating times.  But you can’t wrong with the Pizza Margherita  (tomato and basil) or the Pizza Aubergines (eggplant slices) and a bottle of the house red.  La Pizza Cesci is at 34 rue Massena (+33 4 93 87 70 29, www.crescere.fr) .

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Back in Nice, France Part 6 - Provence Cooking

We spent a couple of weeks in the University-town of Aix-in-Provence, about a 3-hour train trip via Marseilles from Nice.  Aix is a pleasant town of about 140,000 people.  There are excellent restaurants and the town seems to have a more than average number of modern architectural structures.  More on both of these in later posts. 

One day we decided to take a cooking class celebrating the foods of Provence.  We chose Provence Cooking as the vendor of the class and spent a nice day shopping for food and wine, and cooking and eating in a private home about 20 minutes outside of Aix.   Provence Cooking is the brain-child of Gilles Conchy, a Frenchman from Marseilles, who runs day long cooking classes in both towns.

Eight of us met Gilles at the tourist office in Aix, introduced ourselves to each other and headed off on foot to local food market in a town square in the heart of Aix.   We bought the vegetables we would cook later and our purchases included zucchini flowers (courgettes, in French), eggplant, tomatoes, onions, goat cheese and nectarines.   Then we all piled into Gilles’ van and headed to a winery just outside Aix for a tasting and also to purchase wine to drink with our meal.Gilles lives in a single-level house with a large backyard, good size kitchen and large outdoor food prep space.  We all gathered around a large table to prepare our meal. 

Some of us prepped the zucchini blossoms by puling out the pistils and stuffing them with cheese, some of us scooped out eggplants, onions and tomatoes that would later be filled with a meat stuffing, and the rest of us worked on individual nectarine tartlets with an almond crust.   Then we baked ‘petits farcis’, as the stuffed vegetables are known, deep fried the zucchini blossoms that were dipped in batter, and baked the nectarine tartlets.  After that we all sat down and ate and drank everything in sight.   A very pleasant day – we met at about 9am and Gilles dropped us all off back in Aix at about 5 pm.    For a fun experience with the foods of Provence, book a day at www.provencegourmet.com. 

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Back in Nice, France Part 5 - restaurants along the coast

If there is one thing that there is plenty of in the south of France, it’s restaurants.   While we certainly have our favorites in Nice, we also favorites in most of the surrounding towns.   Here are three of our favorites.

The town of Mougins is about 20 miles toward the southwest, just north of Cannes.   We used to go to Mougins when Roger Verge had two restaurants in the village – his famous Moulin de Mougins opened in 1969 and he opened L’Amandier de Mougins in 1977.   Verge died in 2015 in Mougins.   In July of this year, we ventured back to that area with friends and had a wonderful lunch at La Mediterranee, a mostly seafood restaurant in the middle of town.   The fish is very fresh; they bring out your whole fish for you to see before it’s cooked and then it’s  fileted at your table.   The desserts are all delicious – we had the moelleux au chocolat  (cake with a gooey center) and the tarte au citron, a not too tart lemon dessert.   There are many restaurants in Mougins.  This is one worth trying.  La Mediterranee is located at 32 place du Commandant Lamy (+33 4 93 90 03 47, www.brasseriemediterranee.com).

On the other side of Nice is the small coastal town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer.   In the port area is string of about a dozen restaurants, all are probably pretty good, but we ended up at the African Queen for lunch on three different occasions over the course of a month.   I guess we like it.   Sit outside under the permanent covered area.   We tried their hamburger and fries, the creamy burrata, and the duck breast with a huge piece of foie gras sitting on top.   Service is perfect and we’ll proabbaly end up there again on our next rip.  African Queen is at Port Plaisance (+33 4 93 01 10 85, www.africanqueen.fr).

On the western outskirts of Antibes just before you get to Juan les Pins, right on the Mediterranean is the wonderful Plage Keller.   This is a beautiful beach restaurant with large white umbrellas and is perfect for a sunny day lunch.  Have anything seafood related.  Maybe even start with a glass of champagne and end up with the pineapple carpaccio for dessert.   Then take a long stroll along the coast toward Juan les Pins and head back for another champagne.   You can find Plage Keller at Plage de la Garoupe (+33 4 93 61 28 23). 

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Back in Nice, France Part 4 - Nice Remembers

We were not in Nice on July 14, 2016, Bastille Day, when a terrorist drove a truck down the Promenade des Anglais at 11 pm killing 86 people and injuring 458 others.  We were in London, England that day, but typically would have been in Nice, as we go to Nice almost every July.   So in July of this year we wanted to be there and to participate in the activities to honor the dead and injured and also the first responders.   Nice was prepared for this year’s Bastille Day and, in fact, thousands of people took to the streets that night to show the world that a tragedy such as the 2016 event would not damp their spirit nor scare them away.

That afternoon, the current President, Emmanuel Macron, as well as former Presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, attended a ceremony in Palace Massena, where medal were given to the tragedy’s first responders.   The streets were very crowded with people hoping to catch a glimpse of Macron.  We couldn’t get close so went back ti our apartment and watched the ceremony on TV. Nice spent about a week preparing the Place before the ceremony by removing street lights and benches (I think to make the Place more open), erecting tents for seating, putting up stages for a concert, and clearing and cleaning the larger area around the Place for the event. 

During the afternoon, down along the Promenade des Anglais, you could enter a fenced-off area and take a card, about a foot square, with the names of all those killed printed on it, and place it on the ground in designated locations along the boardwalk as a memorial.   In the evening there were 86 spotlights placed along the Promenade that, after dark, were slowly raised until they pointed straight up into the night sky.   The day ended with a music concert just off Place Massena.   It was a very French experience.

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Back in Nice, France Part 3 - Food

Over the years we have tried many different restaurants in Nice.   Every year a few have closed and a few more have opened.   Here are three of our favorites:

La Table Alziari is located deep in the old town area on a small side street.  The restaurant is family owned and, during the summer, most patrons sit outside where they squeeze in 8-10 tables.   Over the years, the menu has almost never changed.  Some of our favorite first courses include roasted red peppers in oil, the white bean salad, Provencal eggplant and the petits farcis (stuffed onions and zucchini).   While not on the menu, they almost always have deep fried courgette blossoms. They are among the most tender and light I have had in Nice.  The waiter (I believe a son-in-law of the owner) gave us the recipe for his batter!  For the second course, try the daube d’agneau (a traditional lamb stew served over pasta), the pasta with pesto sauce, or even the steak tartare and French fries.    The best dessert is the chocolate pie – a gooey mountain of chocolate in a flaky pie crust.  La Table Alziari is located at 4 rue Francois Zanin (+33 4 93 80 34 03).

Bistrot d’Antoine is a typical French bistrot with all the fuss and noise that you imagine.   It’s best to have a reservation, but sometimes you can just drop in and they will have a table for you.  On the first floor is the open kitchen behind a counter and about 10 tables.  The quieter upstairs holds about 8 tables.   For your first course, try the terrine de campagne (the house pate),  or the wonderful foie gras canard.  There is almost always a pasta and a risotto.  For your second course, the magret de canard (grilled duck breast), the filet de boeuf, and the lentils and sausage can’t be beat.   For a change, try the assiette de fromage or cheese platter in place of dessert.  Bistro d”Antoine is located at 27 rue de la Prefecture, a street just north of the Cours Saleya (=33 4 93 85 29 57).

Le Plongeoir is one of the most unique restaurants in Nice.   It sits just east of the port  area and is not really on the water, but in the water.   You walk across a small bridge over the water to a very open outdoor restaurant built on a rock about 50 feet off the land and about 20 feet above the water.   As would be expected, the menu is heavily laden with seafood dishes and also with a large array of salad options.   It’s a unique experience to be sure and on a beautiful sunny day, a great way to spend an afternoon.   Le Plongeoir is located at 60 blvd. Franck Pilatte (+33 4 93 26 53 02, www.leplongeoir.com).

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Back in Nice, France Part 2 - Transportation

Nice, France is a port town with a population of about 350,000 people.  It is the fifth largest town in France.   We have been going to Nice most summers for the past 25 years, so have quite a bit of experience in getting around Nice and the surrounding Cote d’Azur area.  In the early days we always rented a car, primarily to get out of Nice to visit the surrounding towns up and down the coast.  But the car would also sit for days while we spent time touring Nice.  Parking could be very difficult to find even though there are quite a few underground parking garages scattered around town.  But parking wasn’t cheap, garages were often very crowded and the parking spaces were often very narrow and could be difficult to maneuver a car in to. 

For the past 15 years or so, we have been relying almost exclusively on public transportation to get around Nice but also to get to other towns in the area.  Nice has a great, large port with ferries shuttling passengers to towns up and down the coast as well as to Monaco and various ports on the island of Corsica.   Nice also has a great, recently renovated train station just north of the downtown area (about a 15 minute walk from Place Massena).  Nice is part of the extensive, mostly on-time French railroad with trains going to most towns along the coast, as well as inland locations.  The Nice bus system is also very extensive with local buses criss-crossing the town and taking tourists to near by towns, many of which are not accessible by train.  An ancient central bus station was torn down about 5 years ago and now bus stations have been scattered all over town.   You can also sit on the beach all-day long and watch planes bring in sun-worshippers to the relatively-modern airport located just to the west end of the town. 

In recent years, Nice has begun to focus on getting people around town.  In 2007, Nice inaugurated its second-generation tram system (a first-generation system operated in Nice and a few surrounding towns from 1879-1953).   This new tramway is a 5.5 mile above ground single line system that carries over 90,000 people a day along a route from the northwest through downtown to the east.  Trams run about every 4 minutes via an electrified overhead cable system.   A second line is currently under construction and will carry passengers along a 7-mile route from the port in the east part of town to past the airport in the west.   The 20-station line is scheduled to begin opening in 2018 with the last stations opening in 2019.  Many of the stations in this new line are above ground, but as the line passes through the downtown area, the stations will be located underground.   Also, I remember seeing, a few years ago, a prototype tram car positioned on the median of the Promenade des Anglais as perhaps a future system along the sea, but nothing has come of that line since. 

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 9 - Memphis

Memphis is known for blues music, but frankly, I was disappointed by Beale Street.   It is definitely a must see, but it is a bit on then seedy side these days.  There are lots of bars, restaurants and music venues with bright neon signs and lots be music blasting from all of them.  The venues were usually larger than I had imagined hey would be and the music I heard was not blues, but more folk and rock.  Over the course of 3 days in Memphis, we had some great BBQ, so it was definitely worthwhile. 

We also went to the Cotton Museum, a ground floor exhibit area in the former Cotton Exchange Building.   It’s a good history of how cotton transformed the south and focuses on the social and economic impacts of the crop. 

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 8 - Memphis

I had not heard of the famous Peabody Ducks before this trip.  Everyday since the 1930’s, ducks are paraded at 11am down from the rooftop of the hotel to the central lobby fountain with much fanfare and ado.  They are them paraded back up the their rooftop home at 5pm every evening.  There are three ducks now and we were told the ducks are changed every 3 months.  All of this is done to much fanfare led by a Duck Master.  Hotel residents and others fill the lobby to watch. 

The best thing to do In Memphis, is to visit the National Civil Rights Museum on the location of the Lorraine Hotel, the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968.  The museum is built into the motel and covers the entire history of the civil rights movement beginning with slavery in the south, all forms of integration attempts, and end ending in the hallway between two hotel rooms, one where Martin Luther King stated and one where other men in his entourage stayed.  They have put glass windows in the walls and you can look in and see how the rooms looked in that fateful day.   You can then walk across the street and go into the former boarding house where James Earl Ray fired the killing shots.   We spent about 3 hours in the museum.  The exhibits are very powerful and extremely informative.  Standing in the hallway between the two hotel rooms and looking out at the exact spot where Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, gave me goose bumps. This is a must see in Memphis! 

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 7 - Graceland!

Elvis!  On to Memphis with a stop at Graceland!   I did not expect to find Graceland to be as popular as it still is, but it is!   We arrived at about 10:30 in the morning and parked in the very large lot across the street from the mansion and entered the large welcome center and ticket office.  The tour starts with a short film on Elvis’ life and the house.  Then you get in line, given head phones and shepherded into a small bus for the trip across the street, where you a given an electronic tablet that you retake with you and play on the house tour.  The house is not as large as I was expecting but it was decorated for Christmas (we were there the Saturday after Thanksgiving).   You walk the hallways and look in on about 6 rooms before heading outside to see, among other things, Elvis’ and other family members graves.  Then you take the bus back across the street to eat, shop or tour Elvis’ planes, the ‘Lisa Marie’ and the ‘Hound Dog 2’.    We did the basic tour for about $40 per person, but you can also take the Ultimate VIP tour for $159 which includes a private tour and access to rooms that general ticket holders don’t get to see. 

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 6 - Oxford

Rowan Oak is the family home of author William Faulkner and is located in the heart of Oxford, though it can be a little hard to find - head out of town on South Lamar Road about 1/2 mile and take a right on Old Taylor Road.  Follow this road about 1/4 mile until it turns to the left.  At the turn, go straight and park on the dirt road.  The house is about 100 yards away on the right.   It’s a larger house than I had expected with good time hot is and exhibits on Faulkner’s life and writing.  After touring the house you can take a 30 minute walk in the woods the ends at the Ole Miss Museum.   The next stop on Faulkner tour was the city cemetery to visit his grave.  William Faulkner is buried in the St. Peter’s Cemetery about a 1/2 on the other side of the town square from Rowan Oak.  Take a right on Jefferson Street  and then a left on 16th Street. Go about 1/10 of a mile and look for the plaque making Faulkner’s grave.  It is customary to drink a shot of whiskey and throw a few coins on his grave - which, of course, we did.

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 5 - Oxford

Oxford, MS is a nice southern college town.  It reminds me of both Chapel Hill and Charlottesville but is somewhat smaller.  Because of the town square, it also reminds me of Sonoma, CA.  Our first full day there was Thanksgiving Day, so the town was pretty quiet.  Only a few restaurants and bars were open and most of the were closed by early afternoon.  No stores were open, but many had signs to attract buyers to their Black Friday sales.  We spent a good part of the day wandering the ultra-quiet campus of the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss.   I’ll take this opportunity to say that MS citizens are very, very friendly.  While on the Ole Miss campus trying to take a selfie, 4 you don’t women came jogging by, stopped to offer to take the photo and squabbled among themselves about which of them was going to take the picture!   Ole Miss was chartered in 1844 and today has about 24,000 students.  The school made national news in 1962, when James Meredith became the first black student at the then all-white University.  

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 4 - Vicksburg, Jackson

We left Natchez early in the morning as we had a 160 mile road trip up through Vicksburg, Jackson and on to Oxford.  On the drive up to Vicksburg, we made a detour in Port Gibson to see the Windsor Ruins - a set of 23 Corinthian columns, the only remains of an 1861-built mansion that was destroyed by fire in 1890.   The columns sit in a field by themselves with not much around them, about 9 miles southwest of Port Gibson.  Worth the little jog off the main road to see.  Then on to the Vicksburg Military Park,  a national park on the site of the 47-day siege in 1864 won by Union forces.  To see the park, you have to drive around the park dotted with cannon and monuments dedicated to the numerous troops on both sides.  It takes a good hour of slow straight driving but could take hours more if you stop at every monument and cannon location.  It’s a very worthwhile visit.  Eudora Welty’s home in a residential area of Jackson is open to the public.  If you are a fan of Welty’s, as we are, it’s worth the pilgrimage.   We stayed at the Chancellor’s House in downtown Oxford, a 3-minute walk to the town square and a 3-minute walk to the Ole Miss campus.  It’s a nice brand new hotel with large comfortable rooms and a nice comfortable bar and restaurant. 

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 3 - Natchez

Natchez is a sleepy little town.  Admittedly, we were there over Thanksgiving week, so it may have been more quiet than normal.  The best thing we found to do in Natchez is to visit the photography collection of local historical photographer Henry C Norman, who was born in 1850 in Georgia and made his way to Natchez about 20 years later.  A large collection of a couple of hundred of his photographs can be found in the Stratton Chapel of the First Presbyterian Church at the corner South Pearl and State Streets.  A couple of hundred photos document pre- and post-Civil War Natchez.   Natchez also has many historic homes in the downtown area, some of which are open to the public; and some are now B&Bs.   For lunch we headed to the water from to an area known as Natchez under the Hill - a collection of restaurants and shops on a level lower than most of the town.   We had burgers and the tacos sitting at the bar at The Camp - great local cuisine in a local watering no hole.  We were staying at the Monmouth Historic Inn, an early 19th century antebellum mansion sitting on 26 acres of planned gardens, which has been converted to a 30 room bed and breakfast.  And had dinner at the restaurant 1818 there in the Inn.   

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Road Trip through Mississippi - Day 2 - River Plantations

Today we drove from New Orleans to Natchez, MS.  We drive via Baton Rouge up along the Mississippi River.  It’s a very interesting drive.  We stopped at Drestehan Plantation about 25 miles outside of New Orleans.  It was beautiful and we had an excellent tour of the building and learned a lot about plantation life.  Built in 1787,  it was a major producer of indigo and sugar cane.   About a mile down the River Road we found large oil refineries which were an interesting juxtaposition to the antebellum homes.    We continued toward Natchez and stopped at Oak Alley Plantation, perhaps the most photographed of all the Louisiana plantations.  In Natchez, we stayed at the Monmouth Historic Inn and Gardens.  More on that tomorrow.