Gastronomie à la Cote d'Azur

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy for both of us, with a lot of travelling… So we were both quite happy to have a quiet weekend to look forward to for a change. The perfect occasion for a bit of socializing and exploring local cuisine ;)

I started things with a nice lunch with Petri, my Finnish friend who works in Sophia-Antipolis. We decided upon a lunch in a very nice restaurant in Biot, called Les Terraillers. It’s a very classy joint, with a traditional and cozy interior, and a very nice terrace – they also have 1 well-deserved Michelin Star. We went there a few months ago with my parents. This time I was keen to try out the terrace, the weather being more suited for it.

We were not disappointed. Their 39 euro menu is pretty good value for money considering it consists of a starter, main course, dessert, as much of their excellent bread as you want, and some “amuse-bouches” between the main courses as well. And the service is excellent as well – I can thoroughly recommend this place!

For the evening, we headed to meet up with Jean-Luc, his wife Essi, and their kids. Jean-Luc is a French colleague of mine, who spent 6 months working with me here on the Cote d’Azur, but who now works in Helsinki.

Both he and his wife are both into triathlons and the Iron Man competitions, which was the reason for their visit this time (the Nice Ironman was taking place on Sunday, and Essi was taking part). We are not quite as active as them when it comes to sport, so we decided to just meet up for dinner ;-). We chose Villa d’Este, a pretty decent “tourist trap” on Rue Massena (all the restaurants are tourist traps there, so you just have to pick the smallest evil), Rue Massena being well-located and pretty children-friendly.

Villa d’Este is pretty good in that they have decent-sized portions, and even some quite unusual and interesting dishes. And I guess you can’t really go wrong with Italian. We weren’t disappointed, the food was pretty good. We finished off the soiree with a very nice ice cream across the road from the restaurant at Amorino.

The next day, we were meeting up to celebrate Ismael’s 30th birthday (he’d had his real party the weekend before, which we couldn’t make it for unfortunately since we were in Italy, celebrating Mathilde’s birthday!). We eventually settled on lunch at one of the classier hotels in Nice, called Boscolo Plaza. Apparently they have a very nice terrace, with some nice views, so… Spot on, the terrace is very nice, and so are the views. The terrace has a nice view both towards the sea, and the old town. The food isn’t bad at all, either, and surprisingly doesn’t break the bank (considering the location of the place). Naim, Ismael and Sarah all made it – unfortunately Youcef and Ouarda couldn’t make it this time.

For the evening, the plan was to meet up with Marie and JayJay. Great to see JayJay again (the last time was during our wonderful holiday in Mexico and the US, where he did a sterling job showing us the charms of Baja California) – who’s here for the summer (looking forwards to doing a bit of diving with him). We kicked off the soiree with a walk around the old town, and an aperitif near Place Rossetti – Mojito time! (a bit disappointing, the Mojito, I have to say, especially since we were supposedly in some sort of Latino bar/café). After that, we headed to Bistro Fromagier for dinner, and that place, my friends, was a real revelation. Now, I’m not exactly a cheese fanatic, although I have acquired a taste for them since I’ve moved to France. But this place is brilliant.

The place is actually a bit like a wine bar, but they also serve excellent food – especially cheese (obviously!). We really had a great time food-wise (and otherwise too, don’t get me wrong!), and the wines were quite unusual too. They have quite an odd selection of not very well-known wines, often organic ones. I have to say I’ve had better wines, the best way to describe the ones we had would be “different”, I suppose (I have to come up with words like that since I’m not what you would call a wine connoisseur).

An excellent way to end a very nice day in Nice indeed!

Birthday weekend at Lago Como

I and Mathilde have a bit of a tradition, to offer each other surprise trips as birthday presents. This year, I decided to take my darling to Lago Como, up in northern Italy. Not a hard choice, since we are both rather ardent Italophiles (and I was of course keen to practice my newly B1-accredited Italian skills).

After a quick trip back home (I had after all just gotten back from my trip to Ulm, and Mathilde had been on a school trip all week as well) to pack our bags, we hit the road in our trusty Beamer. Our 1st stop was Arenzano, near Genova, where we spent our first night. It was a pretty decent hotel, and the dinner they served in their restaurant was nothing to frown upon either. After a typical Italian breakfast (that’s not really a compliment – I love Italian cuisine, but not their breakfasts, which usually consists of industrial pastries, industrial juices – although at least the coffee is usually good!), we hit the road, and arrived at our lodgings well before lunch-time. I had decided to book an Agritourismo, rather than a hotel, for this trip (an Agritourismo is kind of like farm accommodation). It seemed like a pretty nice place, although we were a bit worried about the prospects of getting sleep, since there was a wedding taking place this night (Italians are noisy enough in normal circuimstances…).

Having checked in, we headed back to Como, to explore the town for a bit. Unfortunately, the sky was ominously dark, and we feared rainfall. But it didn’t stop us from exploring town. Como is a nice enough town, with a quite spread out historic centre, typically Italian, basically. It actually seemed surprisingly un-touristy, considering how famous Lake Como is. We got some pretty nice views over the lake from the harbour, with the mist and dark sky giving making the lake seem almost mysterious.

I once more relied upon trusty Tripadvisor to find a restaurant, and we ended up having lunch in Nr. 2, a nice and cozy place called Ristorante Sociale. I liked the lively atmosphere of the place, and the fact that Italians outnumbered tourists here. The food was excellent, as well as good value for money.





Unfortunately, the weather got decidedly worse after lunch (it started pi**ing down), so we ended up doing indoors stuff during the afternoon. A bit of shopping in a nice bookshop, visiting the Duomo (rather impressive, considering the modest size of Como), and finally heading out to a villa on the other side of town for an exhibition on the Belle Epoque. It was pretty interesting actually, and the villa itself is great, with a nice garden, and superb views over the lake.

For dinner, we went to another well-noted restaurant in the old town called Nostradamus. Again, a very good choice. I liked the atmosphere (and the fact that the waitress spoke to me in English in spite of my brave attempts at Italian – shame on her!) and the place itself less than Ristorante Sociale, but the food was more interesting, I would say.

The next day, the weather was thankfully more like what we would expect from Italy this time of the year: warm, sunny. So time to explore the lake properly, then! We started off by taking the coastal drive up to Belagio, which is located kind of at the centre of Lake Como. Lake Como is kind of shaped like the character “Y” (upside down), with Belagio located at the southern side of the intersection of the three “legs”. It’s a pretty nice little town, typically Italian (meaning a lot of steep cobble-stoned streets climbing up hills, pretty pastel-coloured houses, you get the picture). It also felt pretty touristy – much more so than Como, with plenty of designer and tourist shops along the main streets.

After a couple of failed attempts (confusingly, the ferries leave from two different piers), we managed to catch a ferry to Varenna, just on the other shore across from Belagio. Varenna is smaller and more peaceful than Belagio, seemingly a bit less overrun by tourists (although there is a fair share here, too). I think on balance, I preferred it over Belagio. We had a nice stroll along its peaceful streets, taking in the nice lakeside views. We ended up having dinner in a nice cozy little restaurant on one of the streets a bit up from the lakeside, another little gem of a restaurant. Funnily enough, we had a Swedish waiter, so I ended up practicing my Swedish rather than my Italian…

After lunch, we made our way back to Belagio, for a bit of shopping and more strolling about. From there, we made our way to Lecco, which is located down the south-eastern tip of the lake (Como being on the south-western tip). Lecco is the second biggest city on the lake (after Como), and is probably the least touristy one, being quite industrialised. It certainly has a more modern feel to it than the other towns we’d visited, but we quite liked the place, although it’s perhaps less picturesque than the other places we’d been to. After a short stroll there, we made our way back to our Agriturismo (dinner time!), after a short and misguided stop at Elba (we never really found the town centre and ended up walking along residential streets, and around a huge walled garden we were never able to enter…).

This evening, we decided to dine at the Agriturismo, and that turned out to be an excellent choice! We went for the “menu di degustazione” - and what an excellent choice that was. 30 euros for antipasti, a primo (pasta, what else?) a secondo (some nice veal and pork) and a dessert, and coffee and some grappa to finish off. Pretty good value for money, if you ask me ? Especially since the quality was also absolutely excellent (all local products, apparently…). So pretty much a perfect ending for our visit at the lake then.

Alas, the next day it was time to head back towards France. Our plan was to stop over at the Pavia Charterhouse (one of the architectural wonders from the renaissance period in Lombardy, apparently), but unfortunately it was closed. So we decided to go to Pavia instead. And a very good choice, as it turned out, it was a really nice town actually! Pavia was once the capital of Lombardy, actually, until that role was taken over by Milan in the 14th century. But that does mean there is an impressive array of historic buildings, in a remarkable well-preserved and spread out historic centre. All immaculately maintained and looked after (we are after all in the North of Italy – what a contrast to Naples!). Unfortunately, most of the churches and historic monuments were also closed in Pavia, this being a Monday, but we still had a very pleasant stroll around town.

Our next stop was Monaco, where Mathilde had to pick up some papers for work! We then finally ended up in Carros at Antoine’s place, to celebrate Mathilde’s birthday properly. Great to meet up with the gang again; Marie, Gilles, Valerie and the kids were all there (pretty much set for their move to sunny California). As always, we had a great time with great food, drinks and company (and some pretty nice pressies for Mathilde, too!). That brought an end to a very nice but also rather tiring long weekend… (especially considering we’d both been travelling the week before). It’ll be nice to rest a bit in the office for a change ;-).

A week in Ulm

Normally, my business trips are to sunny Southwood. But this time, the destination was Ulm, in the midst of the Swabian Alb. I already went there once this year, and quite liked it. I was again joined by Cliff, as well as Steve from my team in Southwood. I joined up with Steve and Cliff at Stuttgart airport, from where we headed down to Ulm in our Hyundai rental car (once we figured out how to start it – the clutch did the trick!). We eventually even managed to find our hotel - not so easy, since we had neither map nor GPS – thankfully we had the address at least (I even tried to ask for directions in my very limited German – and obviously led us astray).

After checking in, after asking for advice about local restaurants, we headed out across the Danube (next to which our hotel was located) down to the Barfüßer restaurant/bar/brewery. A pretty decent place for having a few hefeweisse beers (shockingly cheap compared to the Cote d’Azur, I’ll tell you that!) and a nice schnitzel ;-).

The next day, we were joined by our colleague Dmytro at the office, who works in our Brisbane office (didn’t even know until quite recently we had an office there!). After a day of hard work (honestly – we finished around 7 PM!), we made our way back to the hotel, dropped off our things, and made our way for dinner again. After a nice stroll along the Danube, we ended up in the historic Fischerviertel quarter, with its cobble-stone streets and half-timbered houses. Rather picturesque… We ended up dining in a rather nice, cozy little restaurant called Zur Forelle. I had fish, for a chance (since I figured the diet would be a bit meat-oriented this week…). And some of that Hefeweisse beer, naturlich!

On Wednesday, we were joined by Sinhung, who unfortunately couldn’t join us from the start due to a training course he was planning to attend (which , worst of all, was cancelled!). Matthias, our German host, also joined us for our “Ulm by Night Tour Mark 3”. This time, I had done my restaurant research on Tripadvisor – so we ended up in the Nr. 1 rated restaurant in Ulm, “Zunfthaus der Schiffleute”. It’s also located in the Fischerviertel, and has the added bonus of having a nice beer garden out on a courtyard (handy, since it was rather a nice evening). The usual rounds of Hefeweisse ensued, food-wise I decided to go for a bit of an exotic choice this time – Bison steak. And what an excellent choice it was, I think it might’ve been the best steak I’ve had this year. As a nice “digestif”, we decided to have the strongest beer on the menu, the Eisbeer, after which it all went a bit downhill (according to this site , “A rich Eisbock is best sipped like a Sherry, Port, or Madeira; it is never guzzled.” – that’s where we went wrong I think!). Don’t get me wrong, we had an excellent time, even managing a couple of hours in a late-night bar, but the next day in the office was pretty tough, I tell you that!

So, the Thursday was quite a hard day in the office, then. And I feared the worst for the evening too, since Sami (the older half, I believe, of the notorious Mikkola twins) was coming out finally. Things kicked off with an “aperitif” (a hefweisse, what else?) in the Barfüßer bar (same chain as where we went on Monday, but this one is in the town centre), after which we decided to have a “light dinner” at John Benton. Not so light, you should’ve seen the size of the starters. And as for main course, there is only one realistic option, apparently, which is spare ribs… Oh dear… No beer this time though, we decided to go all sophisticated and have some Rieslig white wine. Excellent choice, actually! Probably the 1st German wine I’ve ever had?

That brought an end to my Ulm trip. I did have time to explore Ulm a bit Friday morning (including admiring the very impressive cathedral in sunshine), before driving down to Stuttgart to catch my flight. All in all, a very nice week! And we got a fair bit of work done as well, believe it or not!

Lunch with Marianne and Mikko

We’ve not seen as much of Marianne and Mikko this year as on previous years, for obvious reasons (they have a new young family member who takes up quite a lot of their time). We figured a lunch at our place with them is long over-due, so invited them over for lunch this sunny Sunday.

Since it was rather a sunny Sunday, ‘twas time for a bit of BBQ action. Merquez, Chipolatas, lamb cutlets, duck meat skewers, taboulet, yummie… And some refreshing rose wine brought by Marianne and Mikko to go with it. That’s what I call a nice meal! And all of this followed by a “Fraisier a ma facon” prepared by Mathilde (a dessert I learnt to prepare at a cooking course a couple of years ago). Absolutely heavenly!


And to finish off the festivities, we tried out the liquorish liquor we had purchased in Sorrento during our Easter holiday trip there – also rather tasty I must say! All in all, then, it was a pretty great meal. And great of course to catch up with Marianne and Mikko as well (and little Aleksi as well, of course, who's growing up fast), hopefully we’ll see a bit more of them this summer!

Me and Mikko had a bit of fun charging my Polo’s battery with Mikko’s jumper cables after the meal… We had a bit of trouble in the beginning, since it turned out we hadn’t connected the earth cable to a proper earth on my car. Hmm, perhaps we should’ve done that bit before the lunch and all the rose “Fraisier a ma facon”.

A day out in Nice

We’ve not been much to Nice lately, so since we had rather nice weather today, we figured an escapade to Nice would be a nice idea. The plan was to meet up with my auntie Tutta and her friend Anita, who was visiting from the US of A. After a spot of shopping we met up with the ladies at the Häagen-Dazs café, on Place Magenta. It’s a good place for having some sinfully tasty, calorie-“blessed” desserts, and the terrace is pretty nice too. So the perfect place for a rendez-vous, then! We had good fun catching up with the ladies, nice to see Anita as well (we met her when she was visiting Nice the last time, about 4 years ago).

We then headed down to Pathe Massena for a bit of cinema, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris was on the cards this time. I really loved the movie – I suppose you could say it’s a romantic salute to the magic of Paris, more than anything else. I suppose one could say it’s quite sentimental, but I loved it nonetheless. Owen Wilson’s “Woody Allan” act was pretty good too… The older I get, the more I seem to enjoy Mr. Allen’s films (I used to find them really annoying).

For dinner, the plan was to meet up with Ismael, Sarah, Youcef, Ouarda and Steve at Rue Massena. We ended up going to the Quebec, one of the touristy restaurants on the pedestrian street. I have to say it wasn’t so great food-wise, and the service was even worse – and the bill made us go “auch” as well. Well, it is on the most touristy street in Nice, so I don’t suppose you can expect anything else...

But nonetheless, we had a really good laugh, and that’s the most important thing, right ? Great to catch up with the good old group again (although it’s true that I do meet up with Ismael and Youcef rather frequently for “business lunches”). After the dinner, we ended up in the Häagen-Dazs café again for some after-dinner drinks. And then it was time for us to rush down to the train station to catch the last train to Cagnes – we needn’t have rushed through since the train was 30 minutes late…

Cena Italiana!

As you may have noticed, should you happen to be one of the (regretfully few) regular readers of this blog, we are quite fond of Italy. Mathilde is pretty much fluent in Italian (having done her Erasmus in Perugia), but I’ve got a fair bit of catching up (in spite of my one year of basic Italian at the Farnborough College of Technology). So this year, I’ve been taking Italian evening courses (with, believe it or not, a half-Swedish teacher!), so trying to say something in the local lingo in Italy would be a bit less of an embarrassment.

So, last week, we had our B1 exams (I guess that would make us “not totally crap” at Italian or something – the levels are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C3), and all passed. So to celebrate this glorious achievement we decided to have a meal out. Our original plan was of course to go to an Italian restaurant, but the only authentic one in Cagnes-sur-Mer has unfortunately shut down. Since other authentic options we were aware of would mean going faaar away (either Antibes or Nice), we ended up going to a classic French place called Santa Ana in the Saint-Laurant du Var port instead.

Anyway, it was a pretty good choice, with some very nice seafood for pretty decent prices. We had a brilliant night out actually, finishing the meal at around midnight! A nice bunch of people all in all, I am looking forward to seeing most of them, hopefully, next year, for the 3rd year (and the B2 exam in one year!). That is, assuming the centre cultural gets taken over by the “Federation de MJC” as planned… (there are some “financial issues” to overcome, or so I have heard through the grapevine…)