I am eating oysters with shallot cream and a delicate pear sauce at Mirazur, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant on the French Riviera. The glass-fronted restaurant perches on a hillside with breathtaking views over the beach, harbour and town. It isn't surprising to find such a high-end restaurant on the Côte d'Azur. But this isn't the celebrity haunt of Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Nice, or Monte Carlo it is Menton, the little-known last stop on France's famous coast before you cross into Italy.
Menton is an unlikely location for a restaurant that regularly makes the annual list of the world's 50 best (it is currently number 28). It's a sleepy little town, beloved by genteel visitors who come for its microclimate said to be 3C warmer than the rest of France and exotic gardens. But Mirazur, which was taken over by Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco in 2006 and has been growing in reputation ever since, has put it on the culinary map. The restaurant's dishes are deceptively simple, based around two or three ingredients from the fish market or the its own gardens: sea cucumber with spring onions, say, or Cevennes onions with taleggio sauce and black truffles. On my 11-course tasting menu (105pp, plus wine), just one dish, crispy pork with pickled pears, contained meat. Dishes are delicately garnished with flavour-packed herb snippets and bright pink or purple edible flowers.