La Table du Royal – dinner on the Baie des Fourmis, inside a 1904 palace

La Table du Royal sits on the ground floor of the Royal-Riviera, the hotel that opened in November 1904 as the Panorama Palace at the point where the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula begins, back when it counted 150 rooms with bathrooms, a tennis court and a boat-house holding six launches for sea trips. Paris Singer is said to have fallen for the dancer Isadora Duncan within its walls, and the composer Sergei Prokofiev passed through in 1908. Today the restaurant's terrace runs between two views, the Baie des Fourmis on one side and a pool ringed by a Jean Mus garden on the other, open only in the warmer months. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, its modern Mediterranean cooking priced in the bracket the Guide reserves for the Riviera's most expensive tables. In the kitchen, Chef Geoffroy Szamburski and pastry chef Lucas Simoncini, friends since a Monaco hotel kitchen in 2010, cook a seasonal, produce-led menu for a hotel that belongs to the Leading Hotels of the World.

01The room and the setting

The hotel that houses the restaurant has a stranger history than its neo-Hellenistic calm suggests. It opened in November 1904 as the Panorama Palace, a 150-room address with its own tennis court and a boat-house for six open launches, and early guests included Paris Singer, who fell for Isadora Duncan there, and the composer Sergei Prokofiev, seen in its corridors in 1908. In 1914, while other Riviera palaces turned into war hospitals, it was requisitioned as a school for war orphans and Serb refugees. By the 1980s the building had slipped into decline; a Belgian owner closed it in 1988 for an overhaul, and it changed hands again in 1998 before the consultant Grace Leo was appointed in January 1999 to give it, in her own phrase, a youthful look.

Leo's team broke with the old Belle Époque identity and introduced a neo-Hellenistic palette of olive green, amber and Sienna brown across the ground floor, taking their cue from the Villa Kerylos next door. Outside, the gardens carry the signature of landscape architect Jean Mus, who built them around Oscar Wilde's line about resisting everything except temptation, filling two acres with banana palms, citrus and olive trees. La Table du Royal's own terrace is set to make the most of that work: one side gives an uninterrupted line over the mythical Baie des Fourmis, the other over the pool and its luxuriant planting, and the room opens only in season, from April to October.

02The chef

La Table du Royal is built around two chefs rather than one. Geoffroy Szamburski and pastry chef Lucas Simoncini first worked together in the kitchen of a Monaco hotel in 2010, the start of what the restaurant calls a professional friendship; Geoffroy then spent five years in Martinique before their paths crossed again at the Royal-Riviera in 2019. Szamburski's cooking is described as a modern reading of French gastronomy that respects the authenticity of seasonal flavour, built around local produce, while Simoncini signs the dessert list.

Insider tip

Open April–October, dinner Thursday–Monday; closed for the season as of October 2026.

03The cooking

The kitchen works a genuinely short supply chain, sourcing directly from producers between Ventimiglia, across the Italian border, and the bay of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, by way of the Nice hinterland. Fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs, wildflowers, fish and meat are chosen this way, with each plate built to foreground a single ingredient and to shift with the seasons. The restaurant credits its local fisherman, Arnaud Allari of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, by name for the day's catch and langoustine, alongside San Remo for its gamberoni and the Duplanteur chocolate factory in Grasse for dessert.

04What to order

Among the signature starters, langoustine comes with salt-crusted celery, sorrel and a citrus zabaglione, alongside San Remo gamberoni served simply with oxalis and coral; rabbit appears as ravioli del plin with a Ligurian condiment and a poulette sauce. Among the mains, John Dory (Saint-Pierre) is built on a celery-and-shiso compression with chanterelle and Piedmont hazelnut, while sea bass is served raw and cooked with Èze lemon, courgette and a clam-and-limoncello sauce. On the dessert list, peach is presented raw and cooked with almond and a vine-peach sorbet, Chartreuse blancmange arrives with blackberry, blueberry and a milky ice cream, and the chocolate dessert uses Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone cocoa crafted by Maison Duplanteur.

05When to go and booking

La Table du Royal keeps a short season, open from April to October for dinner Thursday to Monday; as of October 2026 it was closed for the year, due to reopen in April 2027. For a closer view of the kitchen, the hotel also offers a Chef's Table, a tailor-made tasting menu cooked in front of up to four guests, booked by phone, at €190 per person with drinks extra.

06The neighbourhood

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat began as a fishing village and still shelters the harbour of Villefranche on one side and the Baie des Fourmis toward Beaulieu on the other; the 18th-century Chapelle Sainte-Hospice and its Black Virgin sit on the tip of the cap. Villa Kerylos, the Greek-villa replica that inspired the hotel's own decor, and the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild with its seven themed gardens are both within walking distance, as is the stretch of coastal path that passes what was once David Niven's Riviera home.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.