French city breaks for foodies

Bordeaux by Helen Lantsbury – teacher and long term resident

For me, the bakery in Cours de la Martinique in Les Chartrons is the best in Bordeaux. It has an amazing choice of breads, pastries and cakes, and they also do breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice. For a simple lunch or dinner, I’d head for the Le Carré and Le Carreau, both good for a mid-priced meal, as is Au Bistrot in the Saint Michel neighbourhood. Au Bonheur du Palais is a wonderful, but expensive Chinese restaurant and Amicis, is very good and excellent value for money. Oddly, the best restaurant in Bordeaux is Italian! It’s called TentaziOni, in rue Pallais du Gallien. The lunch menu is more affordable, the choice of wines is extraordinary, but the place is quite small so book in advance. If you’re travelling a little further from town, Café Cuisine in Branne is simple and delicious and there are lots of good places in Saint Emilion too. We love Le Cabestan at Saint Jean de Blaignac – a nice guinguette (open air, summer only restaurant). 

Featured place to stay:

Bordeaux Apartments

Right in the city centre, this stylish flat is perfect for exploring, with views of the Cathedral St André from the balcony that’ll make your morning coffee or evening claret that bit more special. Take the 20-minute tram to the sparkling Cité du Vin, stroll to the remarkable water-covered slab known as Miroir d’eau, and explore the old streets of the Chartrons.

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Paris by Peter Clark – resident of over 30 years, on and off! 

You can and should get a classic coffee and croissant in a Parisian café every morning, but brunch is solely a Sunday affair in Paris, so wait for the right moment and visit Le Trésor, in the Marais, for some of their famous Auvergne regional cuisine. When it comes to lunch, go for another Paris classic, a Boullion, although the menus now are a bit more varied than the one-dish original, opened in the 1850s by a butcher looking to sell his poorer cuts of meat. Bouillon Chartier in the 9th (there’s also one near Gare de l’Est) is a good example, or Bouillon République. Other fun lunch options are Falafel at Chez Marianne in the rue des Rosiers, the heart of the Jewish sector of the Marais or Salon Marie Antoinette in the 4th arrondissement. For dinner you can go high or low. The high could Acte II, a slightly expensive rooftop restaurant in the Marais with incredible views, or Amici Miei, an excellent Italian restaurant on the rue Saint Sabin in the 11th arrondissement. Then at the other end, not for quality but for style, there’s the traditional guinguettes down on the banks of the Marne, a few stops from the centre of the city on the RER suburban express train. They often have music and on a summer night it’s a fabulous, fun way to dine.  

Featured place to stay:

Hôtel Passy Eiffel

The original owner of this hotel was a passionate bee keeper, so it’s no surprise the claimed a little green space in central Paris to make their own. It’s a restful space, contemporary but calm and so embedded in the city that some rooms have a view of the Eiffel Tower. 

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Nice by Jon Bryant – travel journalist for the Guardian and Telegraph 

My first call in the mornings, is a café called Marinette behind the cathedral in the old town. Wonderful pastries, really large things with vanilla cream. It’s a great place for breakfast or brunch. For lunch in Nice, I’d say Le Galet (which means pebble, named for Nice’s pebbly beach) which is open much more of the year than some of the other summer-only beach clubs. Out of town, in Roquebrune Cap Martin, you have La Grotte & L’Olivier (the cave and the olive tree). They were trying to dig a railway tunnel and the rock was too hard, so there’s just a cave and now the restaurant is half in and half out of it, on the edge of the village. Great pizza and lunches as well as the dramatic setting. For dinner, there’s a French-Japanese fusion restaurant called L’Eau de vie. They kept the name from the previous business that was there. It’s a really nice, very small restaurant and the chef’s Japanese, but he cooks French specialties with a twist. A couple of hours from Nice in Hyères, and worth the trip, is Chez Soi. The town is a bit downmarket, but has some lovely museums and the restaurant is excellent.   

Featured place to stay:

Hotel Windsor

Odile Redolfi’s family have owned this surprisingly leafy city centre escape for over 80 years, transforming it into a celebration of culture and colour by asking local artists decorate some of the rooms. The city surrounds you with great choices for restaurants and bars, but the garden feels like a tropical oasis you can retreat to when you need a quiet moment.  

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