Vallauris: Café Llorca

Until three-star chef Alain Llorca of Le Moulin de Mougins opened the Café Llorca a few months ago, Vallauris was best known for the ceramics produced in its pottery ateliers by Picasso and others

during the 1950s and 60s. Now, though, it’s also notable for one of the most amusing and reasonably priced new restaurants on the Riviera. Overlooking the town’s main square and just across from the Musée de la Céramique, this sleek, animated café-bistro was designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte: white walls, exposed stone arches, simple streamlined chairs and tables.

Llorca clearly sought to reinvent the classic French café-bistrot for a new century, and he certainly succeeds with a very reasonably priced menu that changes every two weeks, and also offers a recurrent daily special. I lunched on a Thursday, when it was crowded with jovial regulars who had come in for the plat du jour of daube Provençale (braised beef) with panisse (fried squares of polenta). It was delicious, but the older couple next to me also raved about Friday’s morue à l’aïoli (salt-cod with garlic mayonnaise) on Friday and Sunday’s roast lamb. Very drinkable local wines are served by the half-liter pichet for €7, and desserts can be selected from a glass display case stocked with gorgeous individual pastries. Open daily, it’s a very handy address for weekend dining when many other local restaurants are closed.

Place Paul-Isnard, Vallauris, 04.93.64.30.42. €20 per person without wine

Originally published in the March 2008 issue of France Today

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