Le Cèdre – Beirut's table behind Nice's old exhibition halls

Le Cèdre sits on boulevard Risso in Nice's Acropolis quarter, a ten-minute walk from Place Garibaldi and only a few minutes from the port, in a part of the city built around trade fairs rather than tourists. Jean Haidar opened the doors in May 2017, two decades after training at a hotel school in Beirut and then spending seventeen years building his first restaurant, Le Beyrouth, in Strasbourg, before the pull of the Mediterranean sun and what he calls his Phoenician soul brought him south to open a chic, modern dining room of his own. His son Anthony, also hotel-school trained, now works the kitchen alongside him, sharpening the family's Lebanese repertoire with a lighter, more contemporary hand without breaking from tradition. The restaurant is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, recognition for a kitchen that treats mezze, grills and Beirut pastry as serious cooking rather than a theme. It remains a family table first: reservations are taken only by telephone, and the room still runs on home recipes rather than spectacle.

01The chef

Jean Haidar's route to the Riviera began at a hotel school in Beirut in 1986, before he moved to France to open his first Lebanese address, Le Beyrouth, in Strasbourg. He ran it for seventeen years, building a following across Alsace, before the sun — and what he describes as his Phoenician instinct — pulled him south to open Le Cèdre in Nice in May 2017, in a setting he designed to feel chic, modern and refined.

His son Anthony, also a hotel-school graduate, joined him at the stoves and brought a more contemporary register to the kitchen: cleaner plating, a lighter touch with sauces, and a bistronomic reading of dishes their father had served for decades. The partnership has drawn wider recognition in recent years, including Jean Haidar's induction as a disciple of Escoffier, a nod to the classical rigour he brings to Lebanese technique.

02The room and the setting

The dining room sits a few steps from Nice's Centre des Congrès et Expositions, in the Acropolis quarter, with street parking directly opposite. Inside, the house has built an oriental-chic décor of warm wood, gilded detail and low light, designed so that a single dinner feels like a short crossing to Beirut's seafront, with traditional music reinforcing the sense of displacement from the boulevard outside.

Insider tip

Open Mon–Thu 19:00–22:00, Fri–Sat 19:00–23:00, closed Sunday; booking by phone only.

03The cooking

The menu runs on two registers at once. One is pure tradition: a shared table of cold and hot mezze — baba ghanoush, hummus, labneh, Lebanese tabbouleh, rikakat and fatayer — followed by a duo of grills, beef kafta and lemon-marinated chicken chichtaouk, with a vegetarian version available throughout. The other is Haidar's own, more playful line: a crisp labneh tartlet dotted with truffle pearls and chives, or a reworked version of samké harra, the classic spiced-fish dish, given a chef's rework rather than a straight repeat.

Even on the simplest dishes, regulars single out the kitchen's falafel and hummus as the true measure of the house — the plates Jean Haidar built his reputation on long before Nice.

04What to order

For a first visit, the Menu Gourmand is the easiest entry point: built around the chef's daily inspiration, it runs at 43.50€ a head, served across several courses with a vegetarian option, and is available every day. Guests after something longer can take the Menu du Chef, paired with wine and other drinks across four services, priced at 158€ for two.

Off the set menus, look for the Shish Barak — veal-and-pine-nut ravioli bathed in a garlic-and-mint yoghurt sauce — alongside beetroot ravioli with labneh, cheese rikakat, and kafta simmered with herbs and grilled aubergine in a Levantine spiced tomato sauce.

05Wine and drinks

Le Cèdre is one of the few Lebanese restaurants on the Riviera to run an entirely Lebanese wine list. The reds come from Bekaa valley estates — Château Kefraya's Les Bretèches, Château Héritage and Château St Thomas among them — while the aperitif list stays just as resolutely local: a Kir libanais made with white wine and rose syrup, Lebanese beer, the date-syrup cocktail jallab, and arak, the regional aniseed spirit.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.