Le Petit Prince

Le Petit Prince is the restaurant of the Hôtel Prince de Galles, a 1930s belle-époque hotel on Avenue de Verdun, set back from the seafront promenade with a leafy terrace overlooking the Plage du Gorbio. The hotel itself is a quietly preserved piece of old-Riviera architecture, and the dining room operates with the kind of unhurried hotel-restaurant register that has become rare in modern Menton.

The cooking is Mediterranean rather than strictly Provençal, sea bream carpaccio with citrus and olive oil; bouillabaisse-style fish soup; pasta with seafood and saffron; lamb tenderloin with Provençal herbs; a tarte au citron de Menton built around the local citrus speciality. The à la carte covers the bases; the lunch set menu (three courses, seventy euros) is the better value, and the kitchen happily handles dietary requests with hotel-trained patience.

The terrace is the room everyone wants in summer, six tables under the shade of plane trees, with the bay visible through the foliage, and the kind of slow Mediterranean lunch service that justifies a long afternoon. The wine list focuses on Provence with a Champagne section deep enough to handle a celebration; the by-the-glass programme leans into the local Bellet appellation, which is unusually well-represented for a hotel of this scale.

Le Petit Prince is what it appears to be: a serious hotel restaurant in a quietly old-school property, doing the basics very well, without aspirations to Michelin status. The hotel itself is a more interesting overnight option than its size suggests, and the dining room operates as the most comfortable proper-meal alternative in central Menton when the Colagreco circuit is fully booked.

Le Petit Prince is the deal-closing dinner in Menton, the leafy terrace, the long Mediterranean lunch, the wine list quiet enough to actually negotiate, and a hotel sleeping the rest of the day off twenty paces from the dining room. It is the most discreet table in town and arguably the most useful for a serious business meal.