A restaurant beside the sea

Built in 1930s style, the Mirazur stands proudly beside one of France’s oldest avocado trees.  Rising high above the Mediterranean, its garden is full of mint, chives, sage, absinthe and other culinary plants, shaded by orange trees.  Up behind, the Alps merge into the great blue void of the sky.  The chef, Mauro, recalls an earlier journey he made along this road that divides the sea and the mountain, when he was still a pupil at the hotel school in La Rochelle.  Travelling in his Peugeot 104 on his way to Rome via Menton, unbeknownst to him he passed right in front of his future restaurant.

An idyllic scene

From the restaurant itself there’s a magnificent view over the Mediterranean and Menton.  Its charm demands your attention even if you soon turn your gaze away from the far horizon back towards Mauro’s fascinating dishes.  Built on the mountainside, the restaurant fits snugly into steep terraces.  At street level the clean lines of the restaurant interior contain several signed works by the designer Stephanie Marin.  The widely spaced tables are laid out between the fireplace and a huge bay window.

At the lower level, the bar leads out into a small terrace.  To get a view of the sea from his kitchen, Mauro took advantage of the winter months to take down a wall, allowing customers to turn away from the sea and look towards the glass-fronted kitchen where his team is working away - a team which itself knows no national boundaries, consisting as it does of three Italians, two Argentinians, a Japanese and a Mexican.  Today it’s possible to sit at the bar counter and sample some of the chef’s dishes.  Go down a few more steps and you find yourself in Mauro’s herb and citrus fruit garden.  Apart from the avocado tree, this cross between a garden and an orchard is filled with lemon and orange trees, mandarins, clementines and grapefruit trees which shade a dozen varieties of herbs that every customer can smell or touch either before or after their meal.

The Mirazur Gardens

When one vegetable grows naturally next to another, they are destined to go together on the plate.  This is the origin of the idea of growing our own vegetables.  Seedlings and rare vegetables are cultivated in various nurseries around Menton.

Every morning, in the garden overlooking the sea, the team gathers the flowers, fruit and vegetables that Mother Nature provides.

Apart from the 40 varieties of tomato (one of which has a very strong taste of truffle), there’s everything here a cook could wish for: broccoli, beetroot, “Para” cress for its flowers, horseradish, wild radish for its leaves, red chard, rocket, white, yellow or red carrot… in all no fewer than 100 varieties.  The earth as source of inspiration and creativity beside the Mediterranean.  From the richness of this soil Mauro creates his cuisine, placing what is produced by nature at the very heart of all that he creates.

The Mirazur Team

“At the Mirazur it is our good fortune to have an extremely international team, often representing all the continents, which fosters in the cooking both competition and sensitivity.

They all share among themselves their knowledge of techniques and ingredients specific to their own country, incorporating them into the recipes that we devise every day.”