Bocca Nissa — Restaurant in Nice

Overall we’re disappointed. This place has such good reviews and is well recommended but did not live up to the hype for us.

We came a few nights ago and from the second we arrived the service was well below average. The lady at the door seemed like she didn’t enjoy her job much and was sort of dismissive. We arrived early to our booking, we were told to wait as the table wasn’t ready, which was fine because we were early, but then had continued to wait more time because the table wasn’t ready even well after our booking time.

Our table “wasn’t ready” for at least 20 minutes after our booking time, but then watched as several other bookings (also couples) walk in before us. We eventually had to go up and ask if our table was ready, which of course it was. We finally made it up stairs where we walked past a half empty restaurant with plenty of spare tables, and were offered the option of sitting somewhere - giving us the option of sitting somewhere implies the tables were not specifically allocated to bookings and begs the question why were we waiting so long just to be seated.

We eventually were seated, and even then we were not even served or asked for drinks of offered water until 45 minutes after the booking time. It took effort to be seen and place an order. It was even hard to grab staff attention to pay for the bill. Despite this, we didn’t want to be rude or cause a scene so we just sucked it up.

Regardless of the aforementioned faults, the food and cocktails were quite good. The food was maybe a bit overpriced considering there’s many other nearby restaurants also serving great food at a cheaper price, but I’ve seen worse pricing.

Advice for the owner/management - the downstairs area were people arrive needs a better system. People flood around one staff member who’s overwhelmed and is expected to organise everything, pushing people with reservations to the side and telling other people the restaurants fully booked out. It would be smart to place a sign saying “Sorry, fully booked” and also having two lines, one for people who have been seen, waiting for there table to become available, and the other were just arriving for there reservation waiting to speak to the staff member. I don’t know the whole thing just seemed so unorganised and you could tell other bookings were getting irritated too.

Probably wouldn’t visit again until the service was better, but even then again I’ve had better food at...

Unfortunately, I can not recommend this place. TLDR: rude staff, poor menu design, average food.

I was very excited to try out Bocca as a friend of mine came in May and really enjoyed the food and experience.

However my friend and I had a poor experience. We attended the rooftop bar for lunch on a Friday. When we sat down the waiter brought the menu to us and placed a black board on the floor next to us saying these items were the ‘specials today’

We saw on the top corner of the main menu ‘Le dejuner’ and ‘entree/plat ou plat/dessert’ = €20 (see photo for reference). My friend and I thought this was a good idea and ordered with the waiter saying we wanted the lunch menu (entree + main) and pointed to where it printed ‘Le dejuner’. We ordered ceviche + carpaccio as our entrees and 2x octopus main dish (as this was the only item in the mains section that appealed to both of us, we decided to order 2x octopus).

When the bill came we explained there has been a mistake as we had ordered the lunch special, so it should be €20 each. The waiter replied saying that the lunch deals was only applicable for items ordered from the specials board. We then explained that he did not make that clear to us despite us saying explicitly that we would both like the lunch deal. As communication was difficult with the waiter we had asked to see the manager.

The manager came and began talking to us in a very defensive tone saying his colleague had done nothing wrong (before we had even said anything to him!). That ‘the €20 price was impossible when the octopus is already €27’. We then explained it is common practice for restaurants to have lunch deals, and serving sizes may be reduced to make the lunch deal economically sustainable. He remained defensive and accused us of wanting a free lunch. We said that’s exactly not what this discussion is about - it’s about poor communication and how it could have been prevented if the ‘le dejuner’ was not printed on the same page as the main menu. We had hoped for a discussion for constructive feedback. The manager says ‘I have worked here for two years and I have never had a problem like this’ … hey buddy, not sure if you’re aware but there’s something called COVID so I think that’s why you haven’t had many tourists that isn’t ‘like the locals who would...

We were really excited to eat here and were really disappointed.

We reserved the rooftop deck at 9:15 pm on a weekday evening at the end of August and the party was in full swing. It was loud and started to rain and we got wet but we were fine.

We ordered the Dolce Vita (44€ish each) and 4/5 things came out pretty quickly. They were okay. We got the croquets (pretty dry), gambas (fine), the haricots verts (fine), the marine loup (my friend liked it, I didn’t), etc. The chèvre never came. I had to remind him and when he came 20ish minutes later, he dropped it off and left again. But by that time, we were out of bread, so we had to track him down and ask for bread again (and another 10/20 minutes went by). We we never offered second drinks or coffee. He did come by for dessert — and I was worried he was upselling us for the Tablette (a supplement to our menu) and, when it came, that is what it felt like. It’s basically a whole chocolate bar with creme inside. Too much for two people and it felt like a slightly upscale Snickers.

The part that was most bothersome was that the staff seemed much more intent on partying themselves than providing service or getting our bill correct. They got progressively more drunk as the evening went on. I expect it with a bar but if you’re charging me 46€ for food even before drinks…

There was a table of them at one of the high tops on the side— maybe the owner (bald man with big glasses) and people who seemed to work there but weren’t on shift (they’d go behind the bar and get shots and bring them back to the table and they’d all take them)— our neglectful waiter included.

(The others in our section were all having similar problems and looked similarly frustrated.)

We sat for another 30ish minutes while we tried to get his attention to get the bill — and there were mistakes — for one thing, he charged us for the dessert separately (18€). He fixed them but seemed annoyed we had caught them— not apologetic at all. And if you’re doling out shots — maybe send some our way…? LOL. (But truly— some gesture of hospitality at any point could have turned our experience around.)

We left near midnight, not feeling like we were in on the party, but rather an inconvenience — wet and heads buzzing...