La P'tite Cocotte — Restaurant in Nice

First and foremost I wish I could rate this on two categories. Service and food. Food was absolutely 4. 5 out of 5. The food was delicious. Compliments to the chef for creating menu items that are balanced in taste and texture. To add to this the complimentary pairing of either tapenade or pâte was most excellent. The price for the food was very fair and the atmosphere is quaint and lovely. Reservations are highly reccomended as they fill up fast and have very limited seating. The service was something else to be considered and I would give it a 3. As usual, I would walk in and cordially great each staff member in French and converse with them in French. However, as my French is not france French it was discovered and the staff immediately turned to English midway my first sentence with them. At this point the mood all changed. They were cordial and polite throughout, but the tiering of service began. Although they were all little things, it did add up. The most notable was how short they were when we tried to converse with them in French to begin with and then English because they would not acknowledge our French. Perhaps they were busy, but this couldn't be the case as they laughed and joked with tables around us in French and continuously asked them how the food was. When we finished out appetizer we had placed our cutlery on the plate as at other restaurants they would change them out. At this location they went out of there way to put the used cutlery back on our table. At first this was odd, but it also made sense. Why not reuse it. I did afterall just use it myself and there was nothing wrong. However, I was observing the 4 other tables around us and they all had the cutlery removed twice. Once after the appetizer and again after the entrée. We went back to the hotel to ask our concierage if this was actually a thing and he told me that it is the unfortunate reality. My advice is to go to this location for the great snail and cod puffed pastry appetizer and the fantastic veal osso bucco and John Dorey entrée, but don't keep your expectations high for equal service and experiences if you arent a native speaker. Maybe we caught them at abad time, or they had an unfortunate run in earlier that day, but I don't think we should have been the butt end of...

Well the place is definitely overpriced and the portions are just too small. Most of the food was just ok/nice, but nothing special. But then, the spider pork came. Not even touched with salt at any stage of cooking. Hard to chew (or even cut), tasteless, just bad, wasted piece of meat. When I very politely told that to the waiter he just said that he can give me table salt, and when I started to explain why pork needs to be salted before cooking to achieve the right taste and tenderness, because only then salt can properly go into the protein structure to loosen it while it's raw, full of water without tighten muscles so osmosis can do it's job and season the whole thing evenly, he just turned around and walked away. I asked second waitress, but then the first one, definitely working there for longer, just told her to not listen to me, so she walked away without a word too. Only when I went to the owner I got some reaction. She looked at me with anger but took away my plate. Problem is that she did not say anything and only after a long wait I decided to ask myself what's next if I'm going to get a replacement or different dish or something and only then she was like, ok like she was doing me some mercy and still was very angry. I thought that's it, end of that circus, but then the chef bursted out of the kitchen and started shouting at me mostly in french, but the essence was that he was calling me names because according to him ,,salt is salt" and I will have to salt my replacement dish (ravioli) myself too. Never in my life I saw a chef come out of the kitchen to scream at a guest, and also such nonsense that's against basic cooking science that you learn first week in coulinary school, that salt needs time to penetrate pork. Anyways of course he was lying about the raviolis too, because they were in fact cooked in salted water, as they should and that's what seasons them like salting pork before cooking, seasons it... If he were to cook ravioli in unsalted water his grandma would probably wake up from her forever rest just to straighten him up. I don't know who employees such uneducated and uncultured wanna be cooks. Never going again to the place. Rude even for...

NON FAMILY FRIENDLY We have chosen this restaurant as seen high positive rate evaluation. We were also curious to taste the plates offered since we were looking a nice and ‘non-touristic’ place…BUT since at our arrival, we felt uncomfortable and unwelcome. Very rudely answered to our questions. Not talking about any ‘requests’ but just simple questions. There are to many ways of saying ‘no’ or explaining ‘why’ to a client. Clearly the lady didn’t want. Without asking also anything, she was quite sure about our requests, whenever she saw us, said “but we don’t have children-menù”, very uncomfortable. we NEVER AND EVER ASKED for this in any restaurant before, since almost all the children menus are full of fried-unhealthy foods. We usually chose any offer from the menu for our toodler or in case we order different things so she can taste from our plates or exchange with her. So we have understood that in this place the families with children were unwelcome and for the first time in our all trips, we HAD to LEAVE the restaurant…not for the menù but DUE TO RUDENESS. The place is pretty small and we were occupying a table for 4 and with their formula we would pay just for 2,5.. so I can understand that that might be a problem for them.. but if she was little bit kind, I’m sure we could find an ideal solution..but she’ve just preferred to send us away.. they might have the highest quality of the food on the world but the most important quality is BEING KIND. Of course Not pretending to receive any apologies, we are pretty sure that they feel right to behave like this. Just not understanding which kind of tragic trauma can cause to behave in this way… Hope this comment can be helpful for other families…

ps. it was also enough to add a sign that they don’t accept the families with children, so it would be much more honest, understandable...