The Restaurant du Helder, the white building in the arcade of the big Place, has good cookery, and its table-d'hôte meals are excellent.

On regatta days the world of fashion occupies all the tables of the restaurant on the jetée at breakfast-time.

Two resorts patronised by the young sparks of Nice are the Régence and the Garden Bar. The subjoined menu shows what the Régence can do when a big dinner is given there:—

Hors-d'œuvre variés.
Consommé à la d'Orléans.
Bouchées Montglas.
Filets de soles Joinville.
Pièce de bœuf Renaissance.
Chaud-froid de foie gras.
Petits pois à la Française.
Faisans de Bohême à la broche.
Salade niçoise.
Mousse Régence.
Pâtisserie. Dessert.

The great confectioner's shop in the Place Massena and the Casino Municipal are always crowded with ladies at tea-time.

Beaulieu

At Beaulieu the Restaurant de la Réserve is famous. It is just a convenient distance for a drive from Monte Carlo, and the world and the half-world drive or motor out there from the town on the rock and sit at adjacent tables in the verandah without showing any objection one to the other. The restaurant is a little white building in a garden, with a long platform built out over the sea, so that breakfasting one looks right down upon a blue depth of water. There are tables inside the building, but the early-comers and those wise people who have telephoned for tables take those in the verandah if the day be sunny. There are tanks into which the water runs in and out with each little wave and in these are the Marennes oysters and other shell-fish. Oysters, a Mostelle à l'Anglaise—Mostelle being the especial fish of this part of the world—and some tiny bit of meat is the breakfast I generally order at the Beaulieu Réserve; but the cook is capable of high flights, and I have seen most elaborate meals well served. The proprietors are two Italians who also own the neighbouring hotel, and who take their cook with them to Aix-les-Bains when they migrate during the summer to the restaurant of one of the casinos there. A little band of Italian singers and musicians add to the noise of this very merry little breakfasting place.

At Villefranche there are two unpretentious inns where men with an unnatural craving for Bouillabaisse go and eat it, and return with a strong aroma of saffron and garlic accompanying them, saying that they have partaken of the real dish, such as the fishermen cook for themselves, and not the stew toned down to suit civilised palates.

Monte Carlo

The first time that I stayed for a week or so in the principality, I lodged at the Hôtel du Monte Carlo, on the hill below the Post Office. It was a dingy hotel then, not having been redecorated and brightened up as it has been now; but it had the supreme attraction to a lieutenant in a marching regiment of being cheap. When the first day at dinner I cast my eye down the wine-list, I found amongst the clarets wines of the great vintage years at extraordinarily low prices, and in surprise I asked the reason. The manager explained to me that the hotel was in the early days used as a casino, and that the wines formed part of the cellar of the proprietor—whether Mons. Blanc, or another, I do not remember. Most of them were too old to bear removal to Paris, and they were put down on the wine-list at ridiculously low prices in order to get rid of them, for, as the manager said, "In Monte Carlo the winners drink nothing but champagne, the losers water or whisky and soda." So it is. In Monte Carlo, when a man has won, he wants the very best of everything, and does not mind what he pays for it; when he has lost he has no appetite, and grudges the money he pays for a chop in the grill-room of the Café de Paris. The prices at the restaurants are nicely adapted to the purses of the winners; and there is no place in the world where it is more necessary to order with discrimination and to ask questions as to prices. At Monte Carlo it is the custom to entirely disassociate your lodging from your feeding, and you may stay at one hotel and habitually feed at the restaurant of another without the proprietor of the first being at all unhappy. Ciro's in the arcade is a restaurant only, and is very smart and not at all cheap. A story is told that an Englishman, new to Monte Carlo and its ways, asked the liveried porter outside Ciro's whether it was a cheap restaurant. "Not exactly cheap," said the Machiavelian servitor, "but really very cheap for what you get here." On a fine day grand duchesses and the haute cocotterie beseech Ciro to reserve tables for them on the balcony looking out on the sea, and unless you are a person of great importance or notoriety, or of infinite push, you will find yourself relegated to a place inside the restaurant. At dinner there is not so much competition. Ciro himself is a little Italian, who speaks broken English and has a sense of humour which carries him over all difficulties. Every day brings some fresh story concerning the little man, and a typical one is his comforting assurance to some one who complained of an overcharge for butter. "Alla right" said Ciro complacently, "I take him off your bill and charge him to the Grand Duke. He not mind." The joke is sometimes against Ciro, as when, anxious to have all possible luxuries for a great British personage who was going to dine at the restaurant, and knowing that plover's eggs are much esteemed in England, he obtained some of the eggs, cooked them, and served them hot. Ciro's Restaurant originally was where his bar now is; but when the Café Riche, almost next door, was sold, he bought it, redecorated it, and transferred his restaurant to the new and more gorgeous premises, putting his brother Salvatore—who, poor fellow, has since died—in charge of the bar which he established in his old quarters. I cannot put my hand on the menu of any of the many breakfasts I have eaten at Ciro's, so I borrow a typical menu from V.B's. interesting little book Ten Days at Monte Carlo. He and three friends ate and drank this at déjeuner:—