Night out in Nice

It’s been a while since we’ve been to Nice for socializing, so we decided to organize a dinner with some friends to celebrate, well, the arrival of the weekend, I suppose. We sent out an invitation to a diverse bunch of people, and in the end we had quite a good mix of people show up.

Things kicked off with some aperitifs at Bar Karr, on Rue Alphones Karr (obviously!), as suggested by Naim. Apart from Naim, we were also joined by Marie, feeling peckish after a spot of shopping on Avenue Jean Medecin. It’s a pretty cool place for aperitifs, with a good selection of drinks – and best of all, they bring some munchies to go along with the drinks. We spent a relaxing hour or so there, catching up and checking out Marie’s purchases.

I’d booked a restaurant called l’Atelier for the occasion, more or less randomly – had some good reviews on the web, and the location was pretty convenient, and rather importantly, they could welcome a party of 12. In the end, there were a few cancellations – but we ended up being a pretty good crowd – with Mikko, Marianne, Henna, Aki and Petri joining us there.

I liked the concept of the place – their speciality is Socca, but with a twist. Socca is, of course, one of the most popular culinary specialties of Nice. A socca is basically a pancake made of chickpea flour. It’s made and eaten along the Ligurian sea coast, but is called farinata or cecina on the Italian side of the border. It’s nothing too sophisticated – more like a snack.

The concept of this restaurant was to turn socca into something sophisticated – they proposed Socca with a wide variety of “fillings” to go with it. I had one of them tasty soccas, followed by a café gourmand, all washed down with some nice red wine (selected by our enolog, Marianne).

All in all, it was a nice culinary experience (although the fillings kind of covered the taste of the socca itself), and a great night out! Unfortunately there was no time for post-dinner drinks, since we had our last train to catch… (turned out to be a replacement bus service in the end).