Nice can claim one of France’s most famous streets, the Promenade des Anglais, a long curving dual carriageway flanked on one side by belle époque hotels and condominium blocks and on the other by the city’s beach. This famous street also has one of the country’s most famous hotels, the Negresco. Built one hundred years ago (“by the son of a Rumanian immigrant” as is often said) the Negresco is still one of the most exciting hotels in the world. Crammed with modern and traditional art the lovely rooms are all individually created with antique furniture and works of art. Those lucky enough to have a little more space in a suite with a sea view will feel that there is no need to leave the room. The public areas breathe that turn of the century opulence and grandeur that built the great hotels of the world, the Ritz, the Carlton and so many more. The current owner Mme Jeanne Augier has been involved for over half the life of this property and her conscientious and devoted attention to the hotel are still shining through.
Along the rest of the Promenade des Anglais are many of the other top hotels in the city. First among these is clearly the Palais de la Mediterranée, a fine building from the 1920s, completely gutted a few years ago and rebuilt inside in a modern and spacious fashion. This has the advantages of a well-run new hotel with excellent facilities in a superb location behind a very elegant façade. High quality in a very agreeable package.
The Boscolo Exedra is the third five star hotel in Nice, recently elevated to the same status as the two doyens listed above. Behind the coast it stands on a well used street near the heart of the city. It used to be the Atlantic, a standby for tour groups in the eighties, but fell into neglect and was closed. Once again the façade remained while a new and very modern hotel was built behind it. Here we are in the territory of minimalist art, white on white with open plan bathrooms and zebra print rugs. Pink hearts and red billiard tables decorate the lobby. Unfortunately, here it is hard to see the substance behind the froth. The rooms are fine, no more, and the plastic white curved bar and the banquet room (still looking rather like the breakfast room it used to be earlier in the day) are lacking in art, sophistication and style, despite the fact that is what they appear to be all about.
The Meridien is a modern chain with a very unprepossessing entrance and a pair of escalators that look like they are taking you into a train station. The treatment is similarly business-like, large numbers of business people arriving for a succession of conferences, meetings and congresses. Published room rates are astonishing, presumably in the now ubiquitous attempt to make you feel happy that you got such a big discount. No one pays those prices, surely?
There are others, the four star Westminster along the Promenade des Anglais, the rest of the Italian owned Boscolo chain. There is one quirky hotel left to be described however and that is the La Pérouse. Tucked behind a dreary façade that merely acts as a gateway, this member of the Small Luxury Hotels group is actually located in a building that climbs the hillside away from the sea very close to the old chateau. The location is strange and exciting, half way between the port and vieux Nice. It has gardens and terraces, lots of them, with a pool which is backed by the rock face and faces the superb view across the Baie des Anges. It is a shame that the rooms simply don’t make your heart sing. They are more homely, the bathrooms might even have come from someone’s home, but the tiny balconies, rough finished white walls and zip and link beds don’t add up to the price on the back of the door. Fun, but at what cost?
On the Boulevard Victor Hugo is the Holiday Inn and its restaurant, Chez Panisse, which reminds me of the origin of this word. A panisse is a chick pea cake, fried and eaten hot, and the name takes me straight to Nice although I understand the Italians across the border are equally fond of them.
Nearby, on the opposite side of the rue Alphonse Karr, is a restaurant of undoubted quality and very popular with its knowledgeable niçois clientele. Les Viviers is a double fronted restaurant with an elegant end and a lively bistro end where I headed straight away. Although less formal it was barely less expensive yet packed with men and women of a certain age. The tables are small, the corridors narrow and there are good and bad seats. Yet it is clearly loved and the atmosphere in the brass and wood interior is defined by that happy bistro hum that has been the background noise to so many good meals in the past.
Les Viviers suggests fish and the menu confirms this suspicion. There is fish soup, fish salads and oysters, as well as paté and vegetable dishes as well. In the main courses fish again predominates with turbot, John Dory, bream, scallops, shrimp and lobster all available. They still do those wonderful whole fish dishes too and I would have given a lot to have found a companion who would share the magnificent sole meunière which I saw come out of the kitchen. There is meat too, excellent lamb amongst other dishes, and a good wine list much discussed by my neighbours. Expensive, so go but go with others who can afford to pay their own way.
Les Viviers, 22, rue Alphonse Karr, Nice
