In the heart of downtown Nice, Café Nice serves up well executed French fare at very reasonable prices for huge portions.
French food in the States tend to skew towards elevated dining with expensive ingredients, haute service, and the prices to match. Our plans for dinner on a Friday night fell through, so decided on this café based on them having mussels/fries on the menu. It's a big space, with covered outdoor seating, and two large indoor dining areas. It wasn't too crowded inside at around 7:15, and there was no wait. We were greeted warmly by the maitr'd, and seated to our choice, near a window. We got a complementary basket of crostini and olive tapenade, which was good. A basket of sliced baguettes was provide with our meal and constantly refilled (no butter or olive oil though). They have 3 different fixed price menu, the lowest being decouverte menu , (32,5€) with a choice of app, entrée, and dessert. My wife chose French onion soup, Butcher's choice steak (with potato and vegetable), and dessert of the day (which happened to be Prefiterole). I got my mussels and fries (Moules Marinieres for 18,5€). The soup came first and we shared that, both agreeing that it was very good. It was served warm, had plenty of sliced white onions with soaked bread and plenty of cheese. Then our main meal came. The steak was probably chuck, cut very thinly and served in a portion of 3. It was OK. It came with very heavy potato au gratin, and boiled green beans and carrots. As for my plate, I've never seen so many mussels on a plate in my life...there must have been close to 60 small to medium mussels in my dish...so many that the small ones self selected to the bottom. Many of them were too small to eat...surprised they harvested them so small. It was prepared simply with white wine, sliced onions, and parsley. It came with steak fries, expertly fried...addicting (wondering if they were deep fried in tallow). I asked for sauce, and they soon delivered a trio of ketchup, Dijon mustard, and mayonnaise (will only use mayo as a fry dip when in Europe). It took me a LONG time to eat the mussels, mainly to dig out the meat and make sure I didn't crack my teeth on any broken shells. It was very good, and an absolute bargain for around 20 dollars. I finally finished, at which point, they cleared out the dishes and asked me if I wanted dessert. We tried to tell them we would share the included dessert, but there was a misunderstanding and they gave us a double portion of the prefiterole. It was so good, basically a custard filled cream puff, on top of vanilla gelato, drizzled in chocolate sauce, and dusted with dark cocoa powder. Just wonderful, and the two of us finished it with no problem.
It was a leisurely meal, and we paid at the table using a credit card. Tax and gratuity is included in the price, so the only extra was the second helping of dessert (8,5€) that the waiter gave us as a misunderstanding. We told the manager how much we enjoyed our meal, and started back to our hotel, ending a long sightseeing day. read more