The French Riviera has much to offer in addition to beautiful beaches and towns, including numerous kosher restaurants and museums. Alas, the quality varies which I share honestly here. Note that this review is ground covered over nine days, so many locations are not reviewed. Below I recap the food, museums and towns.
FOOD
There are three main centers for kosher bakeries, stores and restaurants between Saint Tropez and Menton, on the border of Italy. Those are Cannes, Juan-les-Pins and Nice. Overall, Cannes has the best food of the three.
Cannes
It may only have half the size Jewish population of Nice but the food is better and the attitude of the people running the restaurants is much friendlier.
Moye. Moye is the finest of the restaurants in the region. Located on the eastern end of the main beach street of La Croisette, one can eat either outside (which can be a little noisy) or inside in a finely decorated establishment. The food is very good with a wide selection of meat main dishes, sides, wines and desserts. Try the nougat for dessert; it originated in the region and Moye makes an excellent version which doesn’t have the sticky, taffy-like consistency found in packaged varieties, but softer and more cake like. Nougat somewhat resembles macaroons in taste as it is made of egg whites, honey, sugar and almonds. The staff here is very friendly and accommodating.
Le Tovel. On a quiet side street not a far walk from La Croisette is a small meat kosher restaurant. While not fancy, it had a decent menu. The steak and risotto were ready in minutes and pretty good, while the fries were oily.
Dr. Sandwich. A relatively new locale, the meat sandwich shop does not have seating. The street food is very tasty, with the sandwiches essentially made from a giant piece of challah with a slit instead of a pita pouch. Like a traditional shwarma place, you pick the salads and fillings to accompany the protein.
Bekef 26. The restaurant is attached to a makolet where one can buy a range of items including cold cuts, wine and candles. One can eat inside as we did for lunch, and the salmon dish was pretty good. Take-away cold cut sandwiches for a day trip. The staff is very friendly.
OKLM. A meat restaurant just a block from Dr. Sandwich with seating indoors and out. While not as quiet as the street with Le Tovel, it is pleasant enough outside and the food was good with large portions.
[Bakery]. There’s a small kosher bakery right next to Rouvi on Rue Louis Nouveau which has a very modest selection of items. They are fine but a far cry from the taste and appearance one finds in Paris.
Juan-les-Pins
Further east from Cannes is Juan-les-Pins, a community mostly made up of Tunisian Jews who fled in the 1960s and 1970s. There are many kosher establishments located very close to each other. Knowledge of English here is not as good as the major tourist towns of Nice and Cannes.
Kozy. A dairy café and bakery. The food is fine with a small selection of brunch food such as pancakes, eggs and sandwiches. The pastries and sweet rolls were OK.
Le Carmel. Next to Kozy is a kosher bakery that has long hours for a bakery with many locales hanging outside. Alas, the baked goods are very dry and not tasty.
Besbeche Azur. Just a street away from many of the kosher places is a fairly nice-looking meat restaurant called Berbeche. The meat is not very good, either lacking taste or very spicy/ salty. Foie gras was in many of the dishes, a locale favorite but not for me.
Nice
Nice is the major city in the region with a sizable Jewish community, so the kosher restaurants are a bit more spread out than in the other towns. Most are located on Rue Georges Clemenceau, and some further away. Most of the stores have the Lubavitcher Rebbe on the wall and have ties to Chabad.
Meat Bar. Near the major cluster of kosher restaurants is a small meat restaurant called Meat Bar. The menu is very limited but the dishes like lamb chops and shnitzel are very tasty. The servers are very friendly, and one is inclined to return, especially in light of the weak competition.
Falafel Sahara. Away from the cluster is a clean store selling shwarma, schnitzel and falafel. Ordering is done on a screen and eat either inside or out. Food was very fresh and tasty. Note: “green peppers” in France means jalapeno, not bell peppers.
Keter. Among the cluster of restaurants is Keter, a dairy restaurant serving fish, pasta and gratin. The food is not very tasty and the staff is cold. While there is seating inside, there is no air conditioning and felt dirty.
Le Kineret. The meat restaurant has take-away options which one should consider as the store is not very clean, had no air conditioning and the staff was unfriendly. The tuna and salmon sandwiches are fine as are the baked good like meringue and biscotti. The chocolate cookies seemed weeks old. While a link to the website is included here, it is as deceiving as a dating app photo. Generally, an unremarkable B- which beats being hungry but you wouldn’t regularly visit.
Le Leviathan. While a much friendlier place than Keter and Kineret, and much cleaner, it is located on a seedy street. Don’t go there at night. The dairy food is fine (also B-) with good selection of pizza, pasta and fish.
Chabad. The shul hosts dozens of people on Friday night and has a small restaurant which we didn’t visit. While the Americans seem to reserve and pay in advance, many stragglers fill the outdoor courtyard in a classic Chabad way. Definitely enough food, with most filling up on the challah.
Try the 123cacher app to find the various restaurants.
MUSEUMS
While the region has many museums, I was advised to skip several including Renoir, Leger and the archeological museums. Outside of the first three listed below, all could be skipped. Note that the current wave of protestors throwing liquids on famous works of art sometimes produces a very long waiting line as security pours through each visitor’s bag.
Picasso. Museo Picasso in Antibes is right on the water in a bright, beautiful old building where the artist worked after World War II for about 18 months. He left most of the art he produced over this period to the location, so a great place to see unique paintings, pottery and sculpture.
Chagall. Chagall is a favorite in Nice. His museum is up the hill but very worth the visit. His enormous works about biblical scenes can be seen up close with great commentary from audio guides accessed via QR codes on your phone. There are gardens on the premises as well. Surprisingly few visitors were there when we visited.
Prince of Monaco Auto Collection. The prince of Monaco donated his car collection which includes antiques from the 1920s all the way up to cars from 2000, as well as a number of Formula 1 race cars. Located at the Monaco port on two floors, the description of the cars is a bit light but the air conditioning is very welcome after the intense Monaco sun.
Palais Lecaris. In the middle of Old Town Nice is an old mansion that now houses an amazing collection of antique musical instruments. Harps, harpsicords and lutes from hundreds of years ago are arranged in cases in the non-air conditioned building.
Matisse. Do not come here if you want to see the artist’s famous works. The best things here are a series of sketches which show how Matisse conceived of a subject before getting to the final painting, and some cut outs that were assembled to be used in future artworks. Regrettably, the museum is mostly obsessed about the building itself and how great it is (and it’s not). Further, it is far away from most other interesting destinations in Nice.
Photography. Near the flower market in Old Town Nice is a small photography museum which rotates its exhibits. Fortunately the current ones are good. Both locations (next to each other) can be viewed in 15 minutes.
MAMAC. The modern art museum of Nice is pretty large but the best art work is the white space between the installations. The museum features contemporary works of “art” which are mostly physical manifestations meant to educate the viewer about the evils of global warming and colonization.
CITIES
The French Riviera is known as Cote d’Azur because of the beautiful blue water that wraps the various coves. The beaches are mostly pebbles and rocks, collateral from the soaring cliffs above the sea. The towns on the coast are basically sized against the length of the beach, with Nice having the largest beach, promenade and city.
Going around the region by car to each town offers three main options: a single lane road along the coast, wrapping the mountains with hairpin turns, or driving inland to the highway (A8) to zoom east/west and then descending to the towns. In other words, don’t look at a map to see how close the towns are but use a driving app like Waze.
Going from most western to eastern:
Saint Tropez. The town has a big flashy name and the tourists to prove it. It features a large marina with enormous yachts, a cute old town for walking around and small boutique hotels. Parking is difficult as tourists dwarf the number of spots on the beach and things to see. Many high end clothing brands are here, and Dior has a beautiful building with courtyard for drinks and food.
Gassin. Up in the mountains above St. Tropez is a very small mountain town called Gassin. There’s not much to do but the drive through the vineyard to get there and views from the mountaintop are very nice. It claims to have the narrowest street in the world, about 15 inches across.
St. Raphael. A charming beach town. While it doesn’t have the big name shopping brands like Cannes and St. Tropez, the beach and marina are inviting and very manageable as tourists seem to ignore this hidden gem.
St. Maxime. A very small town with a modest beach and a quaint old town with just a few streets with shopping for clothing, bags and home items. There is a decent sized antiques/ bric a brac market near the beach as well.
Cannes. This is the big money town. Every fancy car one could imagine dot the roads including Lambourginis, Mclarens, Aston Martins, Ferraris, Bentleys, Maserattis, antique Rolls Royces and Porsches, and many more. The botox and “enhancement” surgery is ubiquitous, with old and young women trying to compete with the curves of the cars. The old town is nice and shopping streets have a fun liveliness beyond the stores. The promenade of La Croisette is lined with palm trees and beautiful hotels like The Carlton Hotel. Hotel Martinez recaptures the Art Deco feel found in Miami hotels but with fantastic service. Stop by Palais des Festivals where people like to have their pictures taken on the red carpet where the Cannes Film Festival takes place. Bring a mat to the public beach as the rocks are hard. Renting a chair – even if you are staying at a hotel – can costs hundreds of dollars for the day. If you’re lucky, crash a wedding at the beach.
Juan-les-Pins. The town has a nice beach, cute stores and some boutique hotels and parks. Overall, it feels much poorer than Cannes, with many store fronts vacant once leaving the main beach street.
Cap d’Antibes. Between Juan-les-Pins and Antibes, a small peninsula juts out into the Mediterraean Sea. The area is mostly reserved for the wealthy homeowners behind high walls but there is a pathway towards a public beach with pretty sunsets and a place to swim.
Antibes. Not far from Juan-les-Pins is the major marina of Antibes with hundreds of boats, a charming old town which includes Museo Picasso and a beach tucked behind some breakers.
St. Paul de Vence. Driving inland is a small town on a hill. The site is basically a single street dotted with art galleries and many tourists. Chagall is buried in the cemetery.
Tourettes-sur-Loup. While St. Paul de Vence is teeming with visitors, no one comes to Touretts-sur-Loup. It is also an old city built on a hill but with many more streets but very few shops. The town offers half hour of free parking to lure visitors, seemingly unsuccessfully.
Nice. The major city which houses the airport, there is a huge old town with frequent markets which change daily – sometimes flowers, food or antiques. There are many shuls including the Grand Synagogue, mostly Sephardi, and restaurants and museums mentioned above. Also grab drinks at the Le Negresco hotel at the main promenade.
Villefranche-sur-Mer. A charming beach front town with marina, beach and places to grab a drink. It has a nice balance between the size of the town and quantity of visitors.
St. Jean Cap Ferrat. Between Villefranche and Beauleiu, Cap Ferrat juts out into the sea much like Cap d’Antibes. The water somehow seems more blue and visitors more mature than the younger Cap d’Antibes beaches. The walk around the tip from the forest to Paloma Beach is beautiful. At the beach, models of all sizes are in bikinis for professional photo shoots. Try to grab a free shuttle at the end of the day to take you to your car parked far away!
Beaulieu. A small marina and beach seemingly for the very wealthy and few tourists. The main draw is the beautiful La Reserve hotel. The outdoor market with high end furniture and eclectic art was empty.
Eze Village. Better than St. Paul de Vence and Tourettes-sur-Loup, Eze is an extensive town-on-a-hill with grand views of the coast. Large perfumeries like Galimard and Fragonard have tours of how perfume is made and the restaurants allow you to buy a drink an soak in the incredible views. Go to the Exquisite Jardins at the very top to see amazing succulent plants and appreciate the dramatic views of Cap Ferrat.
Monaco. Like Cannes, a major focus is on money, including cars, fancy hotels and shopping. The Grimaldi Forum rotates its shows (I got to see Monet) and the Prince’s Antique Car collection is worth a stop along with the grand hotels such as Hermitage. The grand Casino de Monte Carlo is beautiful and opens at 2pm for gambling but one can see the entry at any time.
Menton. Right before the Italian border is another beach town called Menton. It has a long stretch of beach and a small old town. Few tourists relative to the size of the beach.
Hopefully a useful guide for people planning a trip to the French Riviera.
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