Our Favorite Spots for Eats and Treats in Nice
A view over Nice, France, from a vantage point in the Parc de la Colline du Château. June 28, 2025.
My dear spouse has a thing for long-distance triathlons. (Full Ironman races, to be specific.) He’d done several before I even met him, and he tends to do one a year even still. (Except for the years when he does two. Yep.)
When you travel with someone often enough to support them through an intense athletic event, you learn that whatever place you visit for that purpose won’t get much visiting beyond what’s needed to organize for the sport and rest and eat. Running around to do the tourist thing? Not on the agenda.
(Though, yeah, I do escape during his naptimes to see museums and cultural sites when I can. Come on now. I love museums and cultural sites.)
It wasn’t long before Arnaud’s race program took us to Nice, France, where Ironman has at least one race a year. We’ve now visited Nice more than once, always for a race.
As a result, we’ve done a pretty good job eating our way through the central part of town.
Of course, fueling for an endurance race means a person’s not as interested in fancy restaurants, so we passed on any of all that while there. Instead, here are our favorite places in Nice for hearty, delicious meals and treats that should please all palates, even if none of you are planning to run, bike, and swim in succession, without a break, and for an inordinate amount of time.
PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA
Anyone who follows along on my posts about food in different places knows my spouse and I will always, always hunt down a good pizza.
Thing is, we don’t always find a good pizza.
Here in Nice, though? On the Mediterranean Sea and a short hop from Italy? I knew we’d be in luck unless our base-of-stay location in the heart of the tourist area meant that all the good places had moved to the outskirts to serve the locals.
Fortunately, we found two good pizza places that served pizza worthy of the name:
Ristorante Pizzaria Caruso: This was hands-down our favorite pizzeria option. We returned to Pizzaria Caruso in Nice’s Old Town several times on each of our visits to Nice, and we’ll be back. The ambience and staff are welcoming and attentive, and the pizzas and other dishes are outstanding.
Acqua & Farina: This is a solid second choice for delicious pizza in Nice, though stick to the pizza and skip the salads and other menu items. As with our top pick, this one is located in the Old Town neighborhood.
The documented documenting the documentarian. Your trusty author and her triathlete spouse (catch that wristband!) seated at Acqua & Farina for lunch. Nice, France. July 27, 2025.
Alas, neither place has a website, so I can’t link you their way. I have no doubt you’ll find them, though, by asking around or searching the name in your phone’s maps application.
Just writing this makes we want to go back to Nice for a pizza.
Yum. Pizza.
DECADENT BUFFET BRUNCH
The day before race day, especially in the morning, we often opt for a larger meal. (No surprise there.) In Nice, we treated ourselves to the decadent buffet brunch at Hotel Boscolo.
Now, sure, I didn’t deserve all that food. I’m no long-distance triathlon racer. But did I turn down the meal? No, I did not.
Hotel Boscolo’s weekend brunch is open even to people who aren’t staying at the hotel. (As we couldn’t in Nice, because we needed an apartment to accommodate the overload of triathlon gear we had in tow. We do, though, stay in the hotel group’s location in Lyon when we visit.)
The buffet features salads and cheeses and hot dishes and you can order eggs cooked to your preference from the server, too. (I got an omelet, which hit the spot.)
Highly recommended.
REGIONAL SPECIALTIES, HOT AND FRESH
[PHOTO: FROM RIGHT TO LEFT: socca, tourte de blettes, trouchia ]
Should I feel guilty that, while my husband attacked the bike course on a race day, I took the opportunity to wander into the Old Town and treat myself to some of the region’s specialties?
Maybe.
But! I didn’t abscond when he was on a part of the course where I could have seen him, I promise.
And! I stopped into Angea afterward (see below) to pick up a big box of macarons for him to eat after the race.
So where did I go for my regional specialties?
Chez Thérésa in the Old Town neighborhood of Nice, France, will always have a line. It’s worth the wait! September 14, 2025.
Chez Thérésa is an institution in Nice, though it’s far from the only place that serves the street foods and casual dishes that the area touts as specialties. You might be able to find the dishes Chez Thérésa serves elsewhere in town, and they might be just fine, but nowhere else in Nice is as popular. I knew that, if I chose to treat myself here, I’d get a solid selection of the regional must-eats, and they’d be fresher than fresh.
And they were. The line running down the street from the order-here counter (you can eat what you purchase at an adjacent sit-down spot with a few tables or take it to eat on the go) meant that the people in the kitchen worked nonstop to cook and serve the goodies.
My sampling of regional specialties from Chez Thérésa in Nice, France. The socca on the top, the tourte de blettes on the bottom left, and the trouchia on the bottom right. September 14, 2025.
In fact, Chez Thérésa had such a run on socca when I was there that they asked me to wait through several rounds of production for my serving to come out of the wood-fired oven in the back. (I didn’t mind!)
Now, these are street foods originally intended to fuel people for the day or the rest of it, so don’t go to Chez Thérésa looking to “eat light.” I knew what I was in for. I especially knew I wouldn’t need dinner, as I wanted to try a sampling of the goods on offer.
Delicious.
TREATS, GLORIOUS TREATS
My spouse has a sweet tooth bar none, particularly when he’s in heavy training-and-racing mode.
And I can’t say I’ll turn down the occasional cookie or piece of cake, either.
On the treats front, here were our favorites in Nice:
·Angea: Look, we get picky about our macarons. When they aren’t fresh, they’re tasteless and dry, if not tough. Here, though? Fresh as fresh can be and with all kinds of unique flavors, from fruits through to nuts and chocolate and caramel.
Emilie and the Cool Kids: The cookies here are very good. (And I speak from a U.S. perspective, one that knows what a cookie should be.) Fresh and flavorful and worth the indulgence. The to-go salads we got here were also incredibly yummy, a nice balance of ingredients and a house-made dressing that hit the spot.
We tried a few other treats options, but these two places kept us coming back. (And back again.)
Oh, and yep: Angea doesn’t have a website, just like the pizza places I mentioned. It’s in the Old Town neighborhood, though, and I’m sure you’ll find it if you ask someone in a shop or restaurant in the area. It’s probably in your phone’s maps application, too, just like the pizza spots.
MORE GOOD EATS TO COME
Ironman has at least one race in Nice every year, and my spouse is a dedicated Ironman racer. (The man has done more than a dozen of these… so far.)
These facts mean we’ll be back to Nice soon enough—and this list will grow as a consequence!