Cannes has more good tables per metre of seafront than anywhere on the Riviera, and for two weeks in May it has the hardest bookings in Europe. Outside the Festival it is a town that eats on the sand at lunch, a street back from the Croisette at dinner, and in a Port Canto garden after midnight. Here is how it divides, which rooms matter, and how the season changes the rules.
Lunch on the sand
The Croisette beach clubs are the Cannes day. Copal Beach, L'Écrin, Lucia Beach, Plage du Festival and Annexe Beach run the same format with different accents — daybeds with service, a Mediterranean or Italian lunch, rosé into the afternoon and, at Annexe, a dinner-and-show as the season heats up. La Môme Plage is the beachfront of the town's most requested dinner and the natural pairing to it. Front-row beds and lunch tables go early in peak weeks; minimums are confirmed on request rather than published, and we give you the exact figure for your date before you commit. Dress is beach chic, and the dress-code notes are worth a minute.
The lunch that needs a boat
La Guérite on Île Sainte-Marguerite is Cannes' most storied lunch — a beach-club restaurant reached by boat across the bay, where Mediterranean cooking, live music and a barefoot-glamour crowd turn a table into a whole afternoon. In season it is one of the hardest tables on the Riviera to place at short notice, and the boat and the table are arranged together: out of Port Canto mid-morning, back for the evening. It is the day that makes Cannes make sense, and it has its own dress code.
Dinner: a street back from the sea
La Môme on Rue Florian is the town's most requested dinner — a Riviera-Italian kitchen run with the swagger of a club and the discipline of a serious restaurant, on a €450 guide, wall-to-wall industry in May and feeding the yacht harbour all summer. Zuma brings its izakaya to the Croisette and is one of the most in-demand tables in town through the festivals. Around them: Midos for Asian fusion in a design-led room, Luigi for the generous Italian every Riviera town needs, and Le Mashou up in Le Suquet for the open grill and the old town. Twenty minutes east, Mamo Michelangelo in the Antibes old town has been behind its unmarked door since 1992 and is the evening regulars drive out for. La Môme has a dress code; the others are smart elegant in practice.
After midnight
Bâoli at Port Canto is the flagship night — dinner under the trees in a garden facing the bay that becomes a club after midnight, on a €1,500 guide, and during the Festival effectively the city's late-night headquarters. La Chunga on the Croisette is the after-midnight institution — a supper club with live music and a devoted local crowd, Thursday to Saturday on a €1,500 guide. The dressed club rooms — Medusa with its dinner-cabaret, Chrystie's, Bisou Bisou, Speakeasy and Flash — run Thursday to Saturday on minimums confirmed on request. Gotha Club at the Palm Beach has closed; guides that still list it are out of date.
What the Festival does
For the Film Festival in May, everything above changes. The beach clubs become private parties, the restaurants are block-booked by studios and agencies, the clubs run on invitation as much as on tables, and villa rates in La Californie for the fortnight are the highest in Europe. Cannes Lions in June and the September Yachting Festival do a smaller version of the same thing. Outside those windows Cannes is a generous town with a fortnight's notice; inside them it is a relationships town, and the earlier the brief reaches us the better the answer. For the week as one thread — villa, boat, tables, the doors — see the Cannes concierge and Cannes villas.