Villefranche-sur-mer - Winter 2026 - 4

 Dear Friends,

For Christmas one of our kids gave us a gift certificate to a 2 star Michelin restaurant in Nice.  We have only been to Michelin starred restaurants a couple of times in our lives.  Going to a Michelin starred restaurant or a restaurant that aspires to be a Michelin starred restaurant is not like going to any other kind of restaurant.  You might choose a regular restaurant because it is casual, convenient, pretty good food, friendly staff and customers; or you might choose a regular restaurant because they make a really good steak or particularly good fish or some sort of ethnic food.  Regular restaurants can be inexpensive or expensive.  But in a regular restaurant, you know what you will get, and it will not take a paragraph of specialized language to describe what it is.

At a Michelin starred restaurant, it is a total experience: the ambiance, the lighting, the greeting, the aroma, texture and flavors and how they all interact at various times during the experience.  To truly enjoy a Michelin starred restaurant, you need to suspend the concept of a regular restaurant and move into a whole new world where all of your senses are involved and where it is the combination and interaction of all your senses that matter.  Each individual texture, flavor, aroma and appearance is carefully crafted, but it is the combination and interaction that is critical.

Last week we went to Restaurant Flaveur in Nice.  It has two Michelin stars.  We had talked on the phone and via email in a combination of French and English, because we had some concerns about the length of the experience as well as the emphasis on fish in the dishes.  All of these interactions before we even arrived made us look forward to our experience and eased our concerns.  Nevertheless we were not at all sure what to expect.

Our apartment is in Villefranche which is next to Nice, but depending on traffic it can take awhile to get there.  We decided that we would splurge and take an Uber.  It was a rainy night, and we were nervous about getting an Uber and the traffic to get there.  The Uber arrived quickly and the traffic was light so we arrived at 7:20 pm for our 7:30 pm reservation. They pretended that it was perfectly normal to arrive early, and fortunately the next customers arrived 5 minutes after we did.  

It is a small restaurant, maybe 8 or 10 tables.  We have no idea how many people were in the kitchen, but in the front of the house, there were two:  one of the brothers who owned the restaurant and one helper.  They presented each of us with a personalized menu.  Just a quick aside, in English the word menu connotes a list of the food/drink being offered.  The appropriate translation of the English word "menu" to French is "la carte" (unlike English words, French words have a sex.  La carte is feminine).  The word "le menu" in French refers a group of special choices with a special price.  In the case of Flaveur, there is only un prix fixe (a fixed price) menu.  You can choose between 7 or 9 courses with a prix fixe for each one.  There was also a supplement available for an additional amount.  We had the 7 course menu plus the supplement.

Here is a photo of my personalized menu.  Jane's was somewhat different because of her desires we told them about in advance.

A couple of words of explanation are in order.  It appears from my "Exploration" that there 5 courses plus a possible supplement.  Never fear though, some of the headings were divided so we really did get the promised number of courses.  In addition, while it may appear that there are several choices under each heading, in reality you get all of the items listed under the heading, usually in a variety of small bowls or plates.  The brothers that own and run the restaurant were born in Guadeloupe.  The first heading items are an homage to their heritage which they refer to as from the Caribbean.  The second heading items are an homage to food of the French Riviera.  At the end of the meal you return to the Caribbean.  It is all quite esoteric.

The items listed under each heading are in fact virtually every ingredient in the dishes under that heading.  While we took many pictures of the dishes, I cannot begin to list with certainty which picture goes with which description.  The following photos are in chronological order.

This is the first food that arrived, just a little amuse bouche.  The one on the top of the picture is for Jane as it has crab in it and mine has scallops.  They had asked earlier if Jane liked crab. 

This is a close up of mine.

This is what one course looked like when I had finished it.

This is the butter, sitting on a stone, just in case you couldn't tell. 

 

I haven't mentioned the wine.  The wine and liquor is an add-on to the prix fixe.  We each started with a glass of champagne -  Jane a rosé and I a blanc.  Both were fantastic.  

Then we took advantage of the four glasses of wine menu which were served at the appropriate time during the meal.  Here was our first wine.

This is the fish of the day.

This is the lobster supplement and the wine pairing.

Here is a little something more.

We then moved on to the dessert courses with their paired wine.

Of course at the end of the meal, a photo of the two of us as I prepare to pay the bill.  Fortunately, the server was a much better server than photographer.

So while we are on the subject of the bill, the other thing about going to a Michelin starred restaurant is that you need to suspend all concerns or thoughts about money.  If you think about all the work that goes into preparing a Michelin starred meal, you can understand why it is so expensive from a cost perspective.  We once spent a morning in the kitchen of a one star Michelin restaurant watching the preparation for the lunch service.  There were many people working hard all morning at very specific tasks.  As an example one guy was poaching quail eggs all morning essentially one at a time so that they all had exactly the same doneness and amount of egg white on them.  Those eggs were one small part of a salad to be served with the lunch.  The amount of individual effort that goes into every ingredient is incredible.  Having said that, you cannot possibly justify the total price of a Michelin starred experience from a value perspective  except by comparison to other Michelin starred experiences.  Since we didn't have enough of those for a comparison, we just enjoyed the experience and paid the bill.  Justifying the price/value ratio cannot be done by any logical or honest process.  

One of the concerns we had going into the meal was the amount of time the experience takes.  We were assured that the experience would take 3 hours minimum.  In actuality it took 4 hours from start to finish.  That was a long time for us particularly when it started at 7:30 pm.  The service started off somewhat slow as there were times we had no new course for quite a while.  Once the experience got going, it moved along at an appropriate pace.  I would not go to a Michelin starred restaurant unless you are prepared to spend four hours.  If you get frantic about how long it is taking, you will miss a lot of the enjoyment of the experience.

In the end, we are very happy that we got the gift certificate for this experience.  We would not have done it without that impetuous, and we would have never had the experience that we had.  We certainly would not do it every night or even once a year, but it was a great experience completely different from anything we had previously done.

Thank you for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-mer - Winter 2026 - 1

 Dear Friends,

We arrived here on January 1, two weeks ago tomorrow.  We were delayed 3 hours leaving Minneapolis, arrived in Amsterdam 3.5 hours late, missed our connection and arrived in Nice 5 hours late.  But we arrived and were happy for it.  We were both sick when we left Minneapolis and are just now starting to cough less.  We hope to be at full strength soon.  

It has been colder than usual here, but in the last few days the weather has significantly improved.  Today the skies are a beautiful blue, there is a slight breeze, the temperature is officially 58 degrees, but with the warm sun it feels warmer.

Nevertheless, we are heartsick about what is taking place in the US and particularly in our home of Minneapolis.  We feel detached from the reality that our children, grandchildren and other family and friends are experiencing.  We don't want to be there, but feel that we should be.

The conversations that we have had recently with strangers reflects the broad range of views of what is happening.  The other evening we had a discussion with a Brit who lives in France now that was very difficult for us.  We did not know him.  He was clearly anti-immigrant regardless of where they were migrating from and where they were migrating to.  He claimed that England had become "Muslimized".  We were not sure what that meant, but it was clear that he felt that Muslims who had immigrated to England were ruining the country.  He may have missed the irony that he was an immigrant as well having immigrated from England to France.  But privileged white men often miss the irony of their positions.  Of course, he was clear that immigrants were destroying the US, a feeling that I am sure the native Americans would agree with now as they did over four centuries ago.  

Our conversation with strangers yesterday was entirely different.  We were having lunch at one of our favorite casual restaurants in Nice.  The owner is Palestinian and very familiar with the United States.  This is the last week for his restaurant and olive oil selling business.  The US tariffs have had a huge negative impact on his business, and he is of the age where he certainly deserves to retire.  Most, if not all the people in the restaurant were long-term customers like us and were sad to see the end of this restaurant and olive oil store.

We and two other tables were leaving all at the same time and all wanted photos with the owner and the chef.  One family was from France.  They spoke beautiful French but also perfect unaccented English.  The other table was a couple from Switzerland whose French was passable, like ours, and whose English was good.  I suspect that German was their native tongue.   While the languages were varied, the sentiment was the same - Trump is destroying the world.  In a conversation full of English and French, we each enumerated our complaints about Trump.  The others were all very sympathetic when they learned that we were from Minneapolis.  It seems that most everybody here now has heard of Minneapolis and Minnesota.  The Swiss woman was really upset that Trump was heading to Davos.  We asked her to please keep him in Switzerland.  She did not want him.

The Côte d'Azur is a very conservative part of France.  While most of the expats and non-French people we know who visit here for several months a year are liberal, there are also those with whom we will never agree.  When your world view is based on us v. them, black v. white, immigrant v. native, etc. compared with we are all human beings, it seems impossible to find any significant common ground.

Thank you for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-mer 2023 - 1 Constants

 Dear Friends,

We have been in Villefranche since December 29, 2022, and this is the first post I have made this trip.  We first came to Villefranche in January 2014.  In that time, we have seen many changes and many things that remain the same.  When we are here, it is more like we live here than like we are visiting here.  Nevertheless we have new adventures, and we see things change.

Early in January we visited the town of Saint Agnès for the first time.  It claims, "Le village du littoral le plus haut d'Europe."  (the highest costal village in Europe)  Given the number of switchbacks we did to get there, I am not going to argue with their claim.  It is a beautiful little town with spectacular views.  Even if I were Ansel Adams, I'm not sure I could do them justice.  Here are a few.

One thing that has not changed is that there are storms in the winter.  A storm over the Mediterranean can result in large seas in the Villefranche harbor.  The harbor is well protected from three directions but opens up straight south so seas have the full fetch from Africa to build.  The seas build over a several day period allowing for beautiful sunny days but with high seas.  Of course, that brings the surfers out in force.  There is really only one small area of the harbor that is good for surfing and it, ends in rock cliffs so the surfers have to bail before they get to shore.  Here is a picture of beach as the sun is rising and the swells are growing.

Here is a picture from the same vantage point a couple of weeks later.  Notice that a lot of sand on the beach was pushed up to the wall particularly on the right side of the picture.  In actuality, the sand was pushed over the wall and covered the road several inches deep.  So in Villefranche they have to shovel sand instead of snow.

The surfers came out to test their skills and they had some good waves.

This is the area they are surfing in on a day without swells.  Notice the rock cliffs at the end of the run.

The storms do more than move the sand and rocks on the beach around.  They can wreak havoc with the boats anchored in the harbor.  In recent years, the town has been trying to clean up the harbor.  First, they decided that they would put in mooring buoys so that there would not be so many anchors damaging the sea floor.  Now they are making an effort to clean up the sea bed by getting rid of some of the more recent ship wrecks.  For several days, they brought in a barge with a large truck crane on it.

They would move the barge near to the yellow buoy marking the wreck.

Once they are near the spot of the wreck, they deploy the crane.

They also deploy a diver to connect the crane to the wreck.

Then they would hoist the wreck up.

And place it on the barge and repeat.

Another thing that happens when the swells get big, is that the beautiful lights around the bay short out.  Here is a photo of a full moon and the lights last October from our balcony.  

We have really missed the lights for the last couple of weeks.  Fortunately, today the crew came out to fix them.  So we are looking forward to seeing them again tonight.

While the local fishing fleet has dropped from about 30 families to just one or two, we can watch the fishermen doing their work from our balcony.  We also get to eat some of their catch in the local restaurants. Here the fisherman is putting his nets out.  He starts by dropping a buoy and then makes a really big circle with his net and returns to the buoy.

Then he comes back at night to take in his net with the catch.

Another constant of our time here is that we can always find new wonderful places to eat.  Yesterday, we went to Nice to run a couple of errands, after which we just roamed around the old town.  For some reason there were very few people even for a weekday in the winter.  Just around lunch time we came across a restaurant that we had heard about but had never eaten at.  Needless to say, we went in.  We were the only customers for the whole lunch.  The rest of the world didn't know what they were missing.  The name of the restaurant is Oliviera, and it also sells olive oils.  

The proprietor who was also the chef, waiter and sales person made us feel like we were guests in his home.  He spoke perfect English, but when we spoke some French, he immediately asked us which language we would prefer.  We said French because we love every chance we get to practice.  

He has a small menu.

We started by splitting the Aubergine Oliviera (Roasted eggplant with roasted red peppers).

We then split the Lasagne Butternut (Lasagne with butternut squash, spinach, cranberries, cheese).

Both of them were absolutely delicious.  We enjoyed a couple of glasses of red wine.  The proprietor also spent a lot of time talking with us and teaching us about all the olive oil he carries and ships around the world.  As we were finishing our lunch, he started to cook a rabbit stew for some customers that were coming the next day.  When we showed an interest, we got a wonderful lesson on how to cook a stew.  

All in all the perfect finish to a trip to Nice for a couple of errands.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal