Café de la Fontaine – La Turbie's village bistro, reborn

At the top of the Grande Corniche, where La Turbie's medieval lanes open onto a fountain-lined square some 500 metres above Monaco, Café de la Fontaine has quietly become one of the village's most discussed addresses. For two decades it was the informal counterpart to Bruno Cirino's two-starred Hostellerie Jérôme, a few steps along the same street, the easy table where regulars and off-duty gourmets dropped in between grander nights. In 2026, two friends who met on the benches of the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, chef Michaël Abihssira and Sasha Dorfmann in the dining room, took over the lease. The MICHELIN Guide has taken note of the change, and the result is a small, unpretentious kitchen that holds the Selected distinction in the MICHELIN Guide. It remains, above all, a village café that happens to cook with real precision, its blackboard rewritten as the market dictates rather than for show.

01The room and the setting

Nothing about the room shouts for attention, which is precisely the point. Tables sit close together under the patina of a café that has served La Turbie's central square for generations, the kind of worn, sun-bleached charm the new lease of life without losing the nostalgic charm of a village café after its change of hands. Lunch moves at the pace of villagers popping in between errands; dinner slows down, bottles shared, conversation stretched past the last course. The terrace faces the square and its namesake fountain, air conditioning kicks in through the Riviera summer, and the room can be privatised for larger parties, wheelchair access included.

02The chef

Michaël Abihssira and Sasha Dorfmann met training at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, one heading for the stoves, the other for the kind of front-of-house management that keeps a small room running smoothly. Abihssira's apprenticeship years took him through Yannick Alléno's kitchens in Paris and Mauro Colagreco's Mirazur on the coast nearby, grounding he now applies to a far simpler register than either of those addresses. Rather than take on grand-restaurant pretension, the pair chose to continue the café as Bruno Cirino had shaped it: a true bistro, not a showcase.

Insider tip

Closed Thursdays; Sunday lunch only; book ahead for the terrace in summer.

03The cooking

The carte stays short and moves with the season and the morning's deliveries, built on fresh vegetables, fish and meat bought in rather than flown in. On the plate that means bistro staples executed with care: a house country terrine seasoned with five-peppercorn mix, stuffed cabbage, an onglet steak finished with a marchand de vin sauce, and a pearly cod loin with petits pois à la parisienne, closing with a seasonal clafoutis. Spring brings sharper, more considered dishes too: white asparagus served barely cooked with a minute-made mousseline sauce lifted by poutargue, pan-seared trout with a julienne of mangetout and a Japanese-inflected dashi sharpened with Iranian black lime, and a thin apple tart finished with a touch of cinnamon.

04What to order

Expect starters around €15 and main courses between €25 and €30, prices that have kept the café's old regulars coming back as readily as new ones. Go for the country terrine or the fish soup with aïoli to start, the onglet with marchand de vin sauce or the cod loin with petits pois à la parisienne to follow, and leave room for the clafoutis or the thin apple tart if the ardoise still has it chalked up that evening — the board changes often enough that the surprise is part of the appeal.

05The neighbourhood

Café de la Fontaine sits inside a village whose fame long predates any restaurant. Situated at an altitude of 500 meters, the village of La Turbie is renowned for its Trophée d'Auguste, its authentic medieval village, its fine restaurants and its hiking trails offering spectacular views of Monaco and the Côte d'Azur. La Turbie lies at the highest point of the Grande Corniche road, built by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Roman monument that gives the village its name and its skyline was raised to celebrate Augustus: it commemorated the subjection of the Alpine peoples to the imperium of the Roman people under Augustus, its dedication dated by the inscription transmitted by Pliny the Elder to 7/6 BC. A short walk from the restaurant's terrace, the baroque church of Saint-Michel is worth the detour: a baroque-style church that has been listed as a Monument Historique since 1938, built between 1764 and 1777 from the stones of the ruined Trophée d'Auguste. Monaco's rooftops and the Mediterranean spread out below, close enough to visit for an afternoon and far enough to feel like another country entirely.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.