Paloma

This one star Michelin restaurant is situated in the old village of Mougins between Cannes and Grasse. Sounds simple, but with no GPS in the car and being not local — you’ll hardly find the place. Very fancy, chic décor inside and beautiful terrace outside, overlooking the French Riviera. Waiters in black, the chandeliers, tableware with «standing» butter knife and plates with magnets, velvet furniture… Glamorous restaurant in all — its trendy interior and the whole conception. Nicolas Decherchi — their chef, is trying to express with elegance his view of the gastronomic food by «placing the product in the center of the dish». What else can I say…
To begin with — they have several variations of the menu. There was one for 89 Euros, just three course meal already composed for you, it’s a ready set. The one for 149 Euros is composed too, but it has more dishes, like 5 I’d say. And the one for 119 which was our personal choice, it’s of 4 dishes. I exclude all amuse bouches and other amusing little things between dishes. That menu, where you’ve got option to choose yourself from 2 or 3 variations in each course.
You can select your dinner a la cart too, but I doubt a lot that somebody does that much. The main courses are 50 – 80 Euros, but there are starters and desserts also that you might want to try.
We were sharing everything. And they looked at us like we were sneering at the food. What we had were Fois gras in the strawberry jelly. I wouldn’t say that jelly is a good combination for fois gras, especially strawberry with no sugar added. Fig or apricot would suit here much better if you ask me. Artichoke with a lot of something in its description was delicious. Then came «embrouillade de grenouilles» or simply say frog legs, which were nothing too special, a taste of tender and delicate chicken cooked in the wine. «Ris de Veau» or sweetbreads as named in the US I always like to try in all gastronomic restaurants. This one with morels was not the best I’ve tried. It was just OK. But if that was my first experience with Ris de Veau I wouldn’t bother to try it next time. Then the cheese selection. The choice was pretty good, but the presentation leaves much to be desired. Customer is not always right here which is not correct in the first place. And if you ask something that they think is not supposed to come with the food or not appropriate to their mind, like jam or figs or other accompaniments for the cheese — you’ll hear cold: «Absolumant pas!» which sounded a bit rude to me. That, they might call «luxurious attention» may be? Finally we’ve got some corn bread for the cheese. A corn bread for the cheese?! This is the only place in my experience where I have seen that. Desserts: strawberries and rhubarb cooked in a jar accompanied with a mascarpone cake and strawberry sorbet. Nice. But too much of praising the ingredients: the strawberries here and artichokes that were for the appetizer. They opened the jars where berries were backed like it was a sanctuary they worshiped and we should too. That’s too much of performance, it’s a restaurant, not a theater or circus. The second dessert was of nougat and ice cream and some caramel sauce. Strawberries were better I tell you that. The wine list is not as extensive as in some Michelin star restaurants, but nevertheless all regions of France are pretty full represented, and especially, Provence of course. But unfortunately, with rare exceptions, there aren’t much of old vintages, most wines are fairly young, and if it’s not a problem in case of white wines, you’ll have to work hard to choose among red selection a wine that is more or less mature. We asked for advice a very young sommelier, but would be better if we didn’t, cause our first choice would have been evidently much better. Not mentioning that he decanted the bottle somewhere around the corner and left a proper part of the wine in it. Not to say that he didn’t look after our glasses and sometimes we had to wait for him or ask to pour.
There is a dress code, but they let in a group of Germans in shorts flip-​flops, saying that they came just for a drink, not for dinner. Anyways.
In my opinion, it’s a new, quality and trendy place where everything is expensive and with attitude but not very tasty, and certainly not very friendly. They supply gastronomic dishes, but there is nothing special to discover in the taste. And the service leaves much to work on. Time waiting of the dishes was not appropriate.
The valet parking is complimentary.
The check for two including wine would be at least 400−500Euros if you don’t want to leave hungry. Like some people say, it’s enough to feed the small country in Africa. A coffee — 10 Euros. Must have been an exquisite one, but it wasn’t. If I remember right, they have a vast coffee menu there.
Resume: if you are there once, you won’t want to come back, because it might not meet your expectations, like some places of the same type, you’ve been before.