Le froid insoutenable de la Côte d'Azur

I have long held the suspicion that the restaurateurs of the Côte d'Azur, along with many of their confrères elsewhere in the Hexagon, were largely the culinary equivalent of the screwdriver economies, ie mere final, unskilled assemblers of products manufactured elsewhere.

One reason for suspecting this is the paucity of fresh produce being delivered. No butchers' vans, no greengroceries...

Another is the surprising uniformity of the menus.

But the final pièce de conviction is the frequent arrival of one of the massive fleet of vans belonging to the wholesaler Les Surgelés d'Antibes. A look at the visual catalogue of their ready-made products, appetisingly painted in faux naïf style on the facade of their headquarters, shows an almost perfect match, visually and even verbally, with what is on offer in most of the restaurants around here.