La Rotonde – the carousel brasserie inside Le Negresco

Behind the pink glass dome of Le Negresco, where the Promenade des Anglais curves along Nice's Baie des Anges, La Rotonde is the grand hotel's brasserie, and easily its most theatrical room. The palace itself has stood on this stretch of seafront since 1913, and the hotel has welcomed royalty, artists and celebrities for more than a century. It was built to designs by the Dutch architect Edouard Niermans, who also drew the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère in Paris. Inside the rotunda, gold-leafed carousel horses circle a white-and-gold dining room, an affectionate tribute to Jeanne Augier, the hotelier who owned Le Negresco from 1957 to 2019 and first filled it with a real fairground carousel. The MICHELIN Guide lists La Rotonde among its selected addresses for Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, a distinction separate from the two Michelin stars held upstairs by Le Chantecler, run by the same kitchen under Virginie Basselot, one of only two women ever named Meilleur Ouvrier de France in the cuisine category.

01The room and the setting

Step past the entrance and the room reveals itself as a true rotunda, with a white horse at its centre and other wooden carousel horses jutting from gold-leafed walls as if mid-gallop, a faithful replica of the hotel's original nineteenth-century carousel. A mezzanine shaped like an ocean liner's gangway wraps around the upper level, while after dark the Riviera sky is projected in slow motion across the dome overhead. The dining room seats up to 200 guests, with a further 100 covers on the terrace that looks onto the Mediterranean and the Promenade des Anglais all year round.

02The chef

Virginie Basselot has run Le Negresco's kitchens since August 2018, the year she became the first female Executive Chef in the hotel's history. Normandy-born and trained in Paris at the Hôtel de Crillon, the Grand Véfour and Le Bristol's three-star Epicure under Éric Fréchon, she took over as Executive Chef at the Saint-James Paris in 2012 and earned her own Michelin star there within eighteen months. In 2015 she passed the notoriously selective Meilleur Ouvrier de France exam in the cuisine category, becoming only the second woman ever to do so. Gault & Millau named her Chef of the Year in 2018, the same year she arrived on the Côte d'Azur, and in December 2019 she was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur. She still holds the Michelin star at Le Chantecler upstairs, and now steers La Rotonde's brigade alongside sous-chefs Michelle Gibon and Amélia Losilla.

Insider tip

Open daily 7–10:30, 12–14:00 and 19–22:00; lunch formula from €39.

03The cooking

Basselot tracks down her network of small producers by motorcycle rather than delivery van, following the coastal and mountain roads behind Nice for trout, poultry, olive oil and goat's cheese. At La Rotonde that produce turns into a lighter, more immediate register than the gastronomy served upstairs: a frank and colourful kitchen with Mediterranean accents, built on the availability and seasonality of the region's ingredients. Dishes change with the market, but the tone stays constant — unfussy brasserie cooking sharpened with a few technical flourishes from the pastry section.

04What to order

On the current menu, starters run from burrata from Puglia with local courgettes and lemon to a sea bream crudo with pepper-and-fennel vinaigrette, samphire and sobacha, alongside duck foie gras mi-cuit with onion chutney and strawberry pickles, and organic snails from the Ferme d'Odeline in persillade, served by the half-dozen or dozen. Regulars keep coming back for the lobster spaghetti, its bisque infused with tarragon and dotted with cherry tomatoes, and for dessert, the tarte Bourdaloue with vanilla ice cream or a warm chocolate fondant with cocoa sablé and Madagascar vanilla ice cream.

05When to go and booking

La Rotonde opens every day, serving breakfast from 7 to 10.30am, lunch from midday to 2pm and dinner from 7 to 10pm. Tables can be booked directly through the restaurant; on fine evenings, when the terrace fills for sunset over the Baie des Anges, booking ahead is worth the call.

06The neighbourhood

Le Negresco stands at the midpoint of the Promenade des Anglais, next to the Villa Masséna museum of art and history and close to Nice's old town, with the Jardin Albert 1er and the pebble beaches of the Baie des Anges only a short walk away.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.