3-star restaurant with seaview near Marseille Vieux Port

Overlooking the sea, and looking out to the horizon, all of your senses experience the sea, bathed in the bright light of this 3-star restaurant. The streamlined decor is in perfect harmony with Gérald Passedat’s cuisine of the South and the sea. Here, the Mediterranean reigns supreme, because everything changes in line with the seasons, the weather and catch… A meal at Le Petit Nice is like diving underwater, gradually moving towards the ocean depths... discovering the chef’s signature dishes as you go.


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A fish with delicate, firm and melt-in-the mouth flesh, prepared with flavours of the Marseille hinterland: this is the first dish I created, a flavourful homage to my grandmother as this was her favourite fish. A slice of steamed sea bass, known as “loup” in the South of France, but “bar” elsewhere, with colourful ribbons of courgette and cucumber, in hues of dark and light green, on an intensely flavoured “base”. Red and green tomato, lemon, basil, coriander, wild fennel, olive oil and a touch of truffle, a reminder of my family’s roots in Quercy, make a delicate bed for this generous steak, to enhance its delectable flesh. So tender that you eat it with a spoon, to best appreciate the ocean and land flavours sublimely mingling together.

Petals of dried fish (bream, sea bass…) subtly assert their distinct flavours, on a mild, fine cauliflower purée. Taken up a notch by grey mullet bottarga and Krystal caviar for richness and fullness, with fish skin “gratons” (scratchings) adding a crunch to the whole dish. Intensely refined, the fish skin is dried and then fried to become as crunchy as a crisp. With a dulse seaweed-infused, robust fish bouillon drizzled over, the contrast between hot and cold amplifies the dish’s strength.

It is served twice: first of all raw, then in a bisque. The sea garden offers the lobsters claws as well as the catch of the day, lightly poached, and served with shellfish (limpets, oysters) and lifted with samphire, a true sea spice…

In two words of course, as the way of preparing the most well-known dish in Marseille cuisine: “quand ça bout, tu (a)baisses le feu” (when it boils, you turn down the heat).
There are three courses of fish – whereas tradition settles for two, three phases  to dive into the depths of sea flavours. First the raw shellfish, like those that I collected as a child in the calanques – to enjoy with wrasse fish goujonnettes, a “small fry”. Then follow the mid-depth fish, like monkfish or weever, which vary depending on the season and how the Mediterranean is behaving, plunged into a light saffron bouillon. Finally we reach the fish from the great depths, like the scorpion fish or sea bass, cooked whole for even more smoothness, a thick rockfish soup, potatoes cooked in the bouillon and a real fisherman’s rouille, with a base of tomatoes, chilli and garlic.
Each fish adds its own note, and joins the others in the bouillon, returning to the realm from which they originated.