Racines Bruno Cirino

Rating: 15.5
Author: Gault&Millau

06100 NICE

15.5/20
Remarkable Restaurant

BOOK

6 PHOTOS

Chef: Bruno Cirino
Cooking: French
Style: Bistro/Brasserie

Budget (€)

Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

Gault&Millau's review 2026

It's pulsating, it's alive, it's at the root of taste. Vegetables and fruit, in their original essence, are served up by an absolute chef. And while Hostellerie Jérôme in La Turbie is no more, Bruno Cirino's genius lives on in Nice, in the heart of the lively Libération district, in his vegetable garden restaurant. Racines is a place apart. A unique 10-course menu, available only for dinner, costs €85, and is based on an uncompromising harvest. The chef, backed by a waitstaff in tune with excellence, distributes plate after plate of rediscovered obviousness, that of rediscovering the taste of a wild morel stuffed with a duxelle of brown mushrooms. The taste of garden beans with vegetables stuffed with ratatouille. Or just-picked peas escorted by a velouté of buffalo milk pods. We marvel at a spiny artichoke topped with a Mornay sauce like a soufflé, and take a tour of the wild, purple and green asparagus of Provence, all on one plate, spiced up with a sauce made from the ribs and skins. Then there's the Calabrian mountain mashed potato, as creamy as you'd like it, accompanied by spring boletus, a sauce of roasted potato skins, Piedmont hazelnuts and a dash of Voatsiperifery wild black pepper. And what can we say about the Datterino tomato, its vegetal water with olive oil and basil, mixed with candied eggplant caviar, a concentrate of sunshine on the plate. The desserts extend this already sublime sequence: a cheesecake in two textures, raw and cooked, accompanied by a poached white peach with rose jelly from the chef's garden; Mara des Bois strawberries dressed with candied fennel; Burlat cherries roasted in kirsch with their cherry-stone ice cream and buffalo milk. The cellar, with its hundred or so hand-picked references, completes the experience, with a mix of great classics and lively finds, at measured prices. Racines doesn't make a fuss, it does better, it gets it right, an authoritative, intuitive and seasonal restaurant that deserves much more than a third toque. It deserves the detour, the loyalty and the gratitude of those who love real food.