Cannes for foodies

Best restaurants

Cannes eats in two registers. There is the Croisette — beach clubs, hotel terraces, the linen-and-rosé circuit that empties wallets at lunch and fills again at dinner — and there is the older town behind it, where the Marché Forville sets the rhythm and the kitchens that supply locals year-round get on with their work. The 12 places below sit across both registers, deliberately. Some are Mediterranean rooms calibrated for the festival crowd; others are bistros, pizzerias and grills that keep the same hours in February as they do in May. None of them are coasting on the postcode. Cuisines on this list range across French, Provençal, Mediterranean, Italian, pizza, burger and steakhouse cooking — a fair map of what Cannes actually serves once you stop reading the menus pinned outside the obvious places. Addresses are concentrated inside the 06400 postal area, which is most of the city you would walk in two days. Read it as a working shortlist: who opens when, who answers the phone, where to send a hungry visitor at 12:00 or 22:00 without apologising.