Notes from cities we work in, kept by hand. Not a guide. Not a directory. Places where someone is cooking, or thinking, or simply doing the thing well.
A Cannes that mostly sits behind the Croisette, not on it.
A blackboard menu that changes daily. Small plates to share, market produce, a short wine list chosen with care. Book ahead, especially in May.
A roastery and café in a granite-clad room the size of a closet. Single-origin espresso and pour-over, beans roasted on site. The branding nods to Brâncuși; the coffee is the real reason.
A late-19th-century villa in a garden of rare-essence trees, where the old reception rooms are now reading rooms. Free, quiet, and almost unknown to people who come for the festival. A place to put the phone away for an hour.
The Cannes outpost of the Niçois institution, set at the far end of the Croisette in the restored Palm Beach. Niçoise cooking taken seriously: stuffed sardines, courgette flowers, the good tomato salad. Expensive, full of itself, and worth it when the night calls for it.
Lebanese cooking in a garden setting, twenty minutes inland. Bread baked to order, mezze that doesn’t repeat itself, the kind of place where you sit longer than you meant to. A reset from anything Croisette.