By Steve Meacham
Chantecler, Hotel Negresco, Nice.
Jean-Denis Rieubland is Nice's most famous chef. His restaurant, Le Chantecler – at the Hotel Le Negresco – is the only Nice establishment to earn two stars in the Michelin Guide.
He defines his cuisine and style as "inspired by Provence, with the respect of its products and traditions".
So imagine my surprise when I order Nice's most famous culinary creation – a simple salade nicoise – and find it is like no salad I've ever eaten.
Where are the french beans? The diced potatoes? What's with the anchovies?
Admittedly, I'm not dining at Le Chantecler but Rieubland's other, less formal restaurant at Le Negresco – La Rotonde Brasserie. And his salad is delicious. But finely sliced celery? Red and yellow peppers? Radish? Raw onions?
It's finished off with barely seared tuna steak, still-warm poached eggs, skinned tomatoes, small black olives and a dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice and pepper.
I'm told it's Rieubland's invention. He wanted to "revisit" Nice's most "typical" dish with his customary creative passion for local produce.
But I still crave a "traditional" salad nicoise. So the following evening I order the same dish – this time at the Cadillac Bar and Restaurant overlooking the exquisitely picturesque harbour of St Jean de Cap, 30 minutes' drive from the centre of Nice.
It, too, arrives with unexpected ingredients: lettuce, cucumber, gherkins. True, the eggs are hard boiled, but there no green beans or potatoes. And again this version includes anchovies, small black olives and raw onions – though the tomatoes are unskinned. As for the tuna, it is flaked and briny as if it has come straight from a can.
Now I'm on a mission. With just more night in Nice, I decide to track down an authentic salade nicoise.
So the next evening I walk from my hotel to Vieux Nice – the historic part of the city nestling under Colline du Chateau, the commanding former fortress that is Nice's most spectacular landmark.
There are hundreds of eateries in Vieux Nice. But I select an outside table at Restaurant La Mama in Carriera de la Tourre, a pretty square under one of Nice's bell towers.
The old-fashioned, red-checked table cloths look promising, but what clinches it are the words under the restaurant's name: "Specialities Nicoises, Cuisines Traditionelle".
The menu certainly looks up to its boast. What about Tripes a la Nicoise et pomme vapeur ("Guts Nice-style with steamed potato")?
I resist the temptation and stick to my salade nicoise battle plan. And what am I served? Another variation: tinned tuna, hard-boiled egg, anchovies, celery, onions, red pepper and the obligatory black olives.
Not only have the ingredients varied from restaurant to restaurant, but so has the presentation. This one is served in a bowl, the others were served on plates. Each establishment seems to dice the vegetables and hard-boiled eggs in different proportions, and arrange them in a different pattern.
Only later does it become obvious that I've stumbled on one of the most fiercely contested subjects in world cuisine: what does a traditional salade nicoise actually consist of?
The Guardian food writer Felicity Cloake recently had great fun pointing out the wide variations in recipes offered by the world's leading cook book authors for the supposedly simple salad. (Nigella Lawson, for example, upset traditionalists by substituting shop-bought croutons instead of boiled potatoes.)
And the debate has raged since at least 1983 when the racist mayor of Nice, Jacques Medecin, wrote what many still regard as the definite book on Cuisine Nicoise. Medecin strongly objected to including any boiled vegetables (potatoes or french beans) in a salade nicoise, and ruled that tuna and anchovies should never appear together (anchovies are only to be used when you can't afford tuna).
That wasn't the end of the story. Medecin's corruption was later exposed by the English novelist Graham Greene, forcing the mayor to flee France in 1990. Four years later Medecin was extradited from Uruguay and imprisoned.
But, as various food critics have pointed out, just because Medecin was a crooked, National Front-sympathising bigot doesn't mean he couldn't cook.
Celebrated British chef and food writer Nigel Slater goes back further than Medecin, noting that Henri Heyraud, author of La Cuisine a Nice in 1903, listed the ingredients as quartered artichoke hearts, raw peppers and tomatoes, black olives and anchovies. Certainly no lettuce, beans, potatoes – or tuna.
The truth, as I discover, is that if you go to three different restaurants in Nice and ask for the same thing you'll be served three different salads.
The fun is in the pursuit.
But don't pursue it for too long. No matter how many you taste, Slater has warned, none "will quite match up to the perfect salade nicoise you had on holiday a few summers back (when) you were tanned, your shoulders sparkled with sand and you had the quietly smug smile of someone who had sex three times in the last 24 hours.
"Sadly, there is no seasoning quite so tasty as nostalgia."
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Emirates Airline has daily flights to Nice via Dubai from Sydney and Melbourne. See emirates.com/au.
STAYING THERE
Nice has hotels to suit all budgets, but the five-star Le Negresco, 37 Promenade des Anglais, is unforgettable. See hotel-negresco-nice.com/en/.
EATING THERE
La Rotonde Brasserie at Le Negresco has a menu devised by a two-star Michelin Guide chef. See hotel-negresco-nice.com/em/restaurants/.
Restaurant La Mama, 17 Rue Pairoliere, Vieux Nice.
Le Cadillac, 2 Avenue Jean Mermoz, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
Steve Meacham travelled at his own expense.
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