Notes from cities where we work with clients, kept by hand. Not a guide. Not a directory. Places where someone is cooking well, thinking clearly, or simply doing it right.
A Cannes that mostly sits behind the Croisette, not on it.
A blackboard menu that changes daily. Small plates, 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 wardrobe. 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 set 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 a 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, pleased with itself, and worth it when the night calls for it.
Lebanese cooking in a garden, twenty minutes inland. Bread baked to order, mezze that never repeats itself, the kind of place where you stay longer than you meant to. A reset from all things Croisette.