BeefbarCannes will sell you jet skis, sunglasses and a palace on the Croisette. ignore all of it.

the only thing that matters today is the cow. caviar on a beef croquette, served on a block of salt, which is the kind of thing I’d normally roll my eyes at, except it was fucking delicious, then the bavette landed, the butcher’s cut, nothing fancy about it, but it might be the best steak I’ve ever had. no gimmicks, just a cook who knew how to cook this with perfection (rare of course) paired with the house sauce.

some context, because this place has earned it. Beefbar started in 2005 on the port of Fontvieille in Monaco, when Riccardo Giraudi, whose family imports meat for a living, decided to cook the stuff himself instead of just selling it. twenty years on it’s in more than twenty countries, and this summer it moved into the Majestic, right on the Croisette. so yes, it’s a palace. the menu still reads like a butcher wrote it.

the croquette is the move. beef braised until it gives up, rolled, crumbed and fried, then a mayo made with crème fraîche and a spoon of caviar on top. the salt block is theatre, sure, but it’s theatre that works: it seasons whatever sits on it. rich on rich on salt.

then the bavette. in France it’s the bistro steak, the one that turns up with frites at every zinc counter in Paris: a thin, loose-grained cut from the belly side of the animal, full of flavour and completely unforgiving. cook it past rare and it turns to leather. this one was rare, and it tasted the way steak is supposed to taste. it’s not a cut that needs truffle or gold leaf. it needs a cook who doesn’t flinch.

the frites went through the house sauce, one of the secret recipes Beefbar doesn’t give away, and the purée sat there being the quietest thing on the table, which is its job.

and the red. Saint-Joseph, in the northern Rhône, is Syrah country: pepper, dark fruit, a bit of smoke. the bottle they brought round was the Cécillon family’s Babylone, made in Tournon from vines up to 115 years old. a steak like that shouldn’t eat alone.