Because I had eaten there several times, I wanted our last meal in Nice to be at La Cambuse, a restaurant located in the Cours Salaya (which is a restaurant, shopping promenade in the old part of the town). It’s a touristy area and going and eating there could be a little risky. Plus the reviews on Trip Advisor were less than stellar not that I put much stock in reviews not only because it’s easy to complain but having been personally burned by anonymous restaurant reviews I usually choose to disregard them. But there are hundreds of lovely (looking anyway) restaurants in Nice and so it was a choice between two risks. An unknown and a known. So it was La Cambuse, a place I’ve been to many times versus some cute place fraught with any number of perils…loud Americans, frolicking children, bad food, French waiters.
La Cambuse was not full. I don’t think they served 4 meals while we were there, but OK…We started with grilled peppers. Speaking of fraught perils…The menu said grilled red peppers, the did not mention raw garic and basil, chunks of RAW GARLIC and anchovies. ANCHOVIES. Who eats these??? OK, well the Food Control Police ate one, carefully moving the others to the side of the plate. I ate the damn shit. Not the anchovies, although I could taste them, the raw garlic…there was no getting around that. Even though I scraped off much of it, I ate plenty of garlic. RAW GARLIC.
The main course, boeuf en daube provençal with ravioli, for me, might have been spectacular but it was like eating dinner with your head in an oily miasma of garlic. Nothing can get that garlic taste out of my head. And so for the rest of the evening and all through the night….the dreaded garlic vapor lock.
