I can name a handful of restaurants that will distract me from taking the direct route to my final destination and demand a visit. La Petite Maison in the Old Town of Nice is one of them. A warmly lit, charming dining room at 8pm becomes a bustling, vivacious tavern by 9:30pm. Each table is dressed with a toasty baguette, a whole, ruby-ripe tomato, a whole brilliant yellow lemon, sea salt and olive oil. I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to emphasize the beauty of a Mediterranean meal, and with the arrival of a pale yellow carafe of white wine, the table was dressed even more appropriately and our appetites were just getting wet.
The meal began with a shaved raw artichoke and pecorino salad with an anchovy and caper dressing. Deliciously simple – yet the special dressing verged on addictive. The following course, a ‘crudo’ style platter of 5 different raw fish resides as one of the pivotal gourmet dishes in my life. Each piece of fish cured in lemon, sea salt, olive oil and garnished with its subtle yet harmonizing match: shrimp with torn basil, tuna with mango and green onion, scallop with shaved black truffle.
A moment of pause was needed between the next course; one of respect and satiation.
One may have thought that we were in the dead of winter and not on the sunny coast of the Cote d’Azur with the arrival of the farm chicken stuffed with foie gras to the table. Smiles wide we began slicing pieces of the bird and forking with a small piece of foie to make for the perfect composed bite. A small forkful of grandma’s mashed potatoes and a sip of red wine to follow suit, we devoured the dish and sunk into our seats, gleefully satisfied. And whether it was because we didn’t want to leave the buzzing restaurant, made friends with the Brits at the table next to ours, were showered with a shot of chilled apple liqueur by our affable server, or just had room for one more thing in our bellies, we went on to order the white chocolate mousse and a glass of Sauternes. Four hours later, as we were leaving the restaurant we thanked the matron owner, and we thanked ourselves for treating ourselves just oh so well.
