Les Deux Canailles – two scoundrels, one Niçois table

On a narrow street a few steps from Place Masséna, Les Deux Canailles has been getting away with its own joke since 2011: the name means “the two scoundrels,” and there genuinely are two of them running the place. Chef Tsumoru Takano and maître d'hôtel Laurent Inoue first worked together at chef Keisuke Matsushima's Michelin-starred dining room, and after two years there they struck out on their own. Takano had spent years working his way around France beforehand, training in Paris under Tateru Yoshino and in Montpellier with the Pourcel brothers, before the light of the Côte d'Azur — the light that held Bonnard and Cézanne — pulled him south. He builds his plates around market produce: ripe summer tomatoes, courgette flowers, melon de Cavaillon, filtered through a Japanese eye for precision. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, and holds a steady place among Nice's moderately priced, carefully cooked tables.

01The room and the setting

Les Deux Canailles sits at 6 rue Chauvain, in Nice's Coeur de Ville quarter, close enough to Place Masséna to hear its fountains and a short walk from the stalls of Cours Saleya, where much of what lands on the plate was bought that morning. The dining room itself is small and deliberately so.

The décor keeps to a quiet, slightly theatrical register: pearl-grey walls, violet toad-back armchairs and putty-coloured leather banquettes, a cabinet of displayed porcelain, framed canvases on the walls, and a stuffed deer standing sentry in the window. It is a room built for a long dinner rather than a quick one.

02The chef

Tsumoru Takano is known on the competition circuit for his technique, built over years working across France before he crossed paths with Laurent Inoue in the kitchen of Keisuke Matsushima, the Niçois chef whose own restaurant carries a star. Training with Tateru Yoshino in Paris and with the Pourcel brothers in Montpellier gave Takano a classical French backbone. His own instincts, sharpened by his Japanese upbringing, show in details such as a daily carpaccio of salmon and sea bass served with candied-ginger turnips and dashi-marinated aubergine.

Insider tip

Selected in the MICHELIN Guide; lunch Tue–Sat, dinner Fri–Sat; Tue–Thu evenings for groups of 4+ only.

03The cooking

The kitchen leans on whatever the Cours Saleya market is selling that week: summer tomatoes, gariguette strawberries, courgette flowers and Cavaillon melon turn up, in different guises, through the seasons. Over the years the dining room has served a soup en croûte with black truffle and foie gras, a stuffed courgette trompette with sautéed cèpes, and a wild sea bass pan-fried in a Noilly shellfish sauce — dishes built on long-reduced stocks and sauces that keep the cooking rooted in French technique even as the plating stays spare and the seasoning turns, occasionally, towards dashi and citrus.

04What to order

Among the dishes that recur on the menu: a terrine of foie gras du Gers with fresh black figs and a reduction of red port; a croustillant of langoustines set over a soup of local turnips; a roast rack of Sisteron lamb with a true lamb jus, buffalo mozzarella and panisse; and a pan-fried wild sea bass in its shellfish Noilly sauce. To finish, there is a dark chocolate soufflé with clementine sorbet and marmalade, or the chestnut Délicieux, a dessert one local reviewer likened to a Mont-Blanc, finished with a quenelle of vanilla ice cream.

05Wine and drinks

Front of house has its own quiet reputation. Early on, the restaurant hosted an evening devoted to Japanese sake with Kei Miyagawa of the Paris importer Galerie K, matched course by course to a menu Takano built specifically for the occasion. These days pairings fall to sommelier Michiru Nishida, working from a wine list the restaurant describes as drawn from the best French appellations.

06When to go and booking

In October 2026 the restaurant serves lunch Tuesday to Saturday between midday and 2pm, and dinner Friday and Saturday from 7.30 to 10pm; Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings are kept exclusively for groups of more than four.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.