Les Plaisirs – a grandson's table above the Paillon valley

Twenty minutes inland from Nice, where the river Paillon cuts through the pre-Alps, the medieval village of Peillon climbs in stone tiers to a rocky summit. Behind the fountain and up a run of worn steps sits Les Plaisirs, a restaurant built entirely around one young chef. Romain Clavel opened it in 2010, aged 21, the grandson of Aimée Millo, once a chef at Peillon's own Auberge de la Madone, and of the novelist Bernard Clavel, a Prix Goncourt winner, taking over a house that had belonged to the actor Claude Brasseur and his wife, the singer Catherine Sauvage. There is no printed menu. Instead the chef comes out to announce what he has cooked that day, built from his own vegetable garden or whatever his neighbours have brought him, and sets a three-course lunch for a fixed price. The address carries a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, the distinction reserved for cooking of real quality at a fair price.

01The chef

Clavel's paternal grandfather was the novelist Bernard Clavel, who took the Prix Goncourt in 1968 for Les Fruits de l'hiver — a literary pedigree the family has since swapped for pans and a vegetable patch. On his mother's side, the double-barrelled name Clavel-Millo nods to his grandmother Aimée, who once ran the stoves at the village's grander Auberge de la Madone. After training formally, he did stages at the Hôtel Hermitage in Monaco and the Mandarin Oriental in London before coming home to open his own kitchen at just 21. He still wears a corsair's cap at the stove, a nod, he says, to hiding his long hair and keeping a rebellious edge. His mother works the single dining room beside him, taking orders and pouring wine.

02The room and the setting

The house carries its own footnote in French cinema history: it was once the home of the actor Claude Brasseur and his wife, the singer and actress Catherine Sauvage. The Brasseur family sold the property around 1980. Guests now pass the open kitchen on the way in, climbing a last few steps into a single room dressed like a private dining room, its small windows giving onto the valley far below. With around twenty seats pressed close together, conversation between neighbouring tables is more or less unavoidable — and, by most accounts, part of the pleasure. Peillon itself is one of France's most beautiful perched villages, its vaulted passages and crooked stairways stacked up a single rock, roughly twenty minutes by road from Nice; cars stop at the base, and the last stretch up to the restaurant is on foot.

Insider tip

Lunch only, closed Wednesdays; about twenty covers; book ahead by phone.

03The cooking

There is no à la carte. Clavel talks diners through the day's dishes himself, built from his morning's picking in the family vegetable garden or produce brought by friends nearby. Vegetarian and vegan versions can be arranged on request, and the kitchen runs two set menus — a shorter one and a fuller three-course version, with the full three-course format kept for Sundays. Everything, he insists, is cooked from fresh produce only, down to the charcuterie and the sourdough bread made in house. Behind the village, his own vegetable patch supplies broad beans, petits pois and mangetout, the first potatoes and courgettes of the season, and the cherries that go into a clafoutis made to his grandmother's recipe.

04What to order

A lunch here might open with a slice of homemade sourdough under tomatoes, spring onion and translucent pancetta, or a crisp pissaladière, or eggplant layered with homemade sausage, before a main of slow-cooked beef fillet or pork chops from Breil-sur-Roya, served with a medley of roasted vegetables and a dish of gratin dauphinois. On other days it might be pig cheek, duck leg or guinea fowl instead. Dessert tends toward a seasonal fruit tart on a shortbread base, or the grandmother's clafoutis when cherries are in.

05Wine and drinks

The list runs deep for such a small room: roughly a hundred references split between small growers and bigger names, from a Touraine chenin by La Grange Tiphaine to a Saint-Joseph from Christophe Pichon, a Savigny-lès-Beaune from Fanny Sabre and, for serious occasions, an older Cornas from Clape.

06When to go and booking

Les Plaisirs opens for lunch only, every day except Wednesday, with service running from 12.30 to around 2pm. Bookings go through the restaurant directly; with only around twenty covers and a chef running both stove and dining room, reserving ahead is close to essential, especially for weekend lunches.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.