Tina Trattoria – Nice's starred chefs cook for their mothers

Tina Trattoria sits on rue Lascaris, a few steps back from Nice's Port Lympia, in a room that until early 2026 housed a pétanque club known as la boulisterie. Florencia Montes and Lorenzo Ragni served their first covers here on 11 March 2026, barely three hundred metres from Onice, their first restaurant, whose Piedmont and Lombardy repertoire returns at Tina in a simpler key. Onice opened in 2023 and earned its MICHELIN Star within a year; the couple met working the stoves at Mirazur, Mauro Colagreco's three-starred restaurant in Menton. Tina is built as its opposite: bronze-drawn fresh pasta and family recipes moving between Lorenzo's Italy and Florencia's native Argentina. Its name honours both their mothers, underlining the project's family-first spirit. Tina carries no star of its own — it is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, the table built for evenings when Nice doesn't need an occasion to eat well.

01The room and the setting

Gault & Millau's 2026 notebook found a façade borrowed from South American casitas opening onto an almost too-polished room: tall chandeliers, Carrara marble and a vertical wine cellar, Cinecittà flourishes for what is nominally a trattoria. Inside, the floor is laid in emerald retro tiles, black-and-white portraits of Italian epicureans line the walls, and a solid wood bar dressed in the same grey Carrara marble anchors the room, the soundtrack leaning toward Sanremo festival standards. The room holds up to 86 covers, with a further 24 seats on the terrace for lunches and summer evenings. Service is drilled and theatrical — white shirts, green waistcoats, bow ties — led by maître d'hôtel Cyril Trégoat, who runs the floor less like a formal dining room than a family reunion in full swing.

02The chefs

Florencia Montes and Lorenzo Ragni are partners at the stove and in life. She grew up in Argentina and rose through Mirazur's kitchen to become its executive chef, while he, a native of Umbria who started out in his family's pizzeria, passed through Piazza Duomo, Enrico Crippa's three-starred address in Alba, Piedmont, and The Ledbury in London before the two met at Mirazur. They opened Onice together in 2023 and won a MICHELIN Star within the year. Where Onice lets them play with tasting menus and seasonal invention, Tina is the room where Lorenzo's Piedmontese instincts and Florencia's Buenos Aires childhood sit side by side on one short, unpretentious card.

Insider tip

Open Wednesday to Sunday, lunch and dinner; book online or by phone for groups.

03The cooking

The kitchen's sourcing is deliberately narrow and named: Cetara anchovies, caught each spring off the Amalfi coast and matured for eighteen to thirty months in chestnut casks; Fassona veal and beef from the breeder Marco Martini; vegetables from the market gardens of Ventimiglia and Bordighera; Parmigiano aged at least thirty months and Robiola di Roccaverano, one of Piedmont's most sought-after cheeses. The rice is Carnaroli from the Riserva San Massimo in the Ticino valley, grown on a reserve of some six hundred hectares. Pasta is made fresh daily and extruded through bronze dies rather than Teflon, the slight roughness of the dough helping sauce cling to it rather than slide off, exactly as the chefs state on their own site.

04What to order

Start with the Tartare de bœuf à l'Albese, dressed simply in olive oil and 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano DOP (€14), or the crisp fried tripe (€11) that Gault & Millau singled out on the appetiser list. Vitello tonnato, the Piedmontese classic of cold veal under a tuna-spiked mayonnaise, opens most tables, often alongside gnocco fritto, the Emilian fried bread traditionally eaten with cured meats. From the pasta list, tajarin comes napped in a slow bolognese ragù, spaghettoni are turned cacio e pepe style, and ravioli del plin — the 'pinched' parcels of Piedmontese peasant cooking, filled with roasted beef and pork — arrive under a dark roasting jus. Risotto alla milanese, saffron-gold and finished in butter, uses the San Massimo Carnaroli, while ossobuco di Fassona comes with gremolata and a butter-rich mash built for scarpetta. For dolce, there is a tiramisu made to Bettina Silvana's recipe — Lorenzo's mother — and a dulce de leche flan from Betina Hernandez, Florencia's mother, alongside affogato and a zabaglione gelato.

05Wine, prices and getting there

The wine list runs more than half Italian by reference, with a shorter run of French regional bottles alongside; Gault & Millau praised its coherence and the bar's own skill with an aperitivo. Day-of-opening coverage put the overall span of the card at roughly €8 to €26. Tina opens Wednesday to Sunday for lunch and dinner. The nearest tram stop is Port Lympia on line T2, a short walk past the fishing boats and the first terraces of the Port district, with Place Garibaldi and the old town a little further on.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.