Cannes: A Food Tour Through the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Cannes was our next stop along the French Riviera, and like Monte Carlo and Saint-Tropez before it, this is another port built on the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Cannes started life as a modest fishing village of maybe 300 people, first settled by Ligurian tribes and later passed between Romans, Phocaean Greeks, and the monks of the Lérins Islands, who controlled the town for centuries. Its transformation began almost by accident in 1834, when a British statesman named Lord Brougham was blocked by a cholera quarantine from reaching Nice, took shelter in Cannes instead, and fell so in love with the place that he built a villa and returned every winter for the next thirty-four years. Word spread through the English aristocracy, hotels followed, and the fishing village slowly became one of the most fashionable resorts in Europe.

🍽️ Why We Love Food Tours

Today we did something we love to do whenever we travel: a food tour, this one called

Food tours have become one of our favorite ways to get to know a city fast. The guides almost always speak good English and know the culture and food scene inside and out, their livelihood depends on the quality of every stop they choose, and the pace is relaxing by design, casual strolls with plenty of chances to rest, hydrate, and just take it all in. Over the years we’ve done food tours in Paris, Vietnam, several ports in Italy, Colombia, Prague, and a few stops around the US. Some have been better than others (Paris, if we’re being honest, was our favorite), but every single one has been interesting and well worth the price. Today kept that streak alive.

🥐 Meeting Vanessa

We took the tender ashore a bit early to make sure we knew exactly where we were headed, and found the meeting point just a short walk along the harbor front. We had time to wander, taking in the marina and the Ferris wheel along Cannes’ beautiful port, before settling in near our meeting spot to wait.

Vanessa, our guide for the day, showed up a few minutes early alongside another couple from our ship we hadn’t met yet, just the four of us for the tour, which turned out to be perfect. Vanessa had owned her own restaurant in Cannes for several years before having a baby and deciding to sell it so she could spend more time with her daughter; she’s been doing catering and food tours ever since. We knew immediately we were in good hands.

🍷 Wine and Cheese to Start

Apparently the Spanish, French, and Italians along this coast have no issue at all with wine before lunch, something we’d learn to expect for the rest of the trip. After about a five-minute walk winding through parts of the old town, with Vanessa filling us in on bits of Cannes history along the way, we arrived at a lovely boutique wine shop specializing in local wines from both the French and Spanish coasts.

A handsome young shopkeeper poured us a wonderful rosé paired with an assortment of cheeses, talking us through the wine, the vineyard it came from, and its grape varietals, all of which I’ll confess I couldn’t repeat now. It was excellent with the cheese and bread, good enough that I ended up buying two bottles, a rosé and a Pinot Noir. Why, exactly, I’m not sure, since all the wine aboard the Wind Surf is included and there are plenty of excellent choices every night. We arranged to swing back by and collect our bottles after the tour wrapped up.

🐟 The Fresh Market

Next up was the fresh market, where Vanessa introduced us to a few local specialties, including fried stuffed zucchini flowers, which looked interesting, but not on our menu for the day. We wandered the stalls picking up bits of food history here and there until we reached a stand making a focaccia-style bread topped with fried onions, olives, and anchovy paste. I’m not usually an anchovy person, but the flavor was mild and the combination genuinely delicious. Cases of beautiful cheese seemed to be everywhere we turned, a serious cheese lover’s paradise.

🦐 Seafood, and New Friends

Our main meal was at a seafood restaurant with several options on offer. I went with steamed prawns served on a big plate lined with oyster shells; Bob and the other gentleman in our group both ordered smoked salmon. His wife, a vegan, sat this stop out. We talked, laughed, and got to know each other over the meal, exactly the kind of easy connection a small-group food tour makes possible.

🎬 La Croisette and the Film Festival

From there we headed into the fancy part of town, past the famous Palais des Festivals, the theater that hosts the Cannes Film Festival every year. The festival almost didn’t happen the way it did: it was originally planned for 1939 as a response to fascist interference in Italy’s Venice Film Festival, but the outbreak of World War II shut it down before a single film screened. It finally launched in 1946, moved into its current home on La Croisette a few years later, and introduced the Palme d’Or, its top prize, in 1955. Vanessa told us quite a bit about the area and pointed out Cannes’ own version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, handprints instead of stars. People were taking turns posing for photos on the famous red carpet steps; we managed, with some willpower, to resist joining them.

We continued through the pedestrian streets, packed with shoppers and tourists browsing every upscale boutique imaginable. My daughter and granddaughter would have loved it here. I took a picture of the Prada storefront and sent it straight to them.

🍨 Gelato, Tartes and Coffee

France is famous for their tarts and apparently they are a thing in Cannes. We came to a corner confectioner shop named Maison De La Tarte, which is famous for their wonderful french tartes. We opted to share two because we were all too full to eat a whole one on our own.

No European food tour is complete without a gelato stop, and Vanessa didn’t disappoint, leading us to Papilla that makes everything on site and has earned a well-deserved reputation as the best in Cannes.

Our final stop was a pastry and coffee shop that roasts and grinds its own beans in house. I don’t drink coffee myself, but the rest of the group was thoroughly impressed.

By then we were full, warm, and pleasantly worn out. Vanessa walked us back toward the harbor, pointed us in the right direction for both the ship and the wine shop where our bottles were waiting, and sent us on our way.

📝 Practical Notes

This food tour was excellent and, for us, the perfect way to spend a day in Cannes. Others from our ship took a shore excursion to Antibes instead and reported back that it was very good as well, worth considering if a food tour isn’t your speed