The 5 Coffee Shop You Can’t Miss in Nice
Nice has never been a city where coffee is an afterthought, but the version of it that turns up on
Google today is a specific and fairly recent thing: the international coffee-shop format — flat whites,
matcha, all-day brunch plates, a counter you can sit at with a laptop — grafted onto a Mediterranean city
that already had a century of café habit of its own. We went through every coffee shop with a Google
Business listing in central Nice, 32 of them once the obvious mismatches were filtered out, and weighted
each one’s rating against how many people actually left it, because a 4.8 from a couple of thousand reviews
and a 4.4 from five thousand are not making the same claim. Five came out clearly ahead, and what is
striking is how tightly they sit together: from Avenue Jean Médecin down to Rue Sainte-Réparate in the old
town is about 1.1 km, so unlike a coffee crawl in a bigger city, this one is a single walk. Between them
they cover a hundred-year-old house that has grown to Paris, a brunch room near the station, an old-town
group that never closes between services, a bakery-café on the main shopping artery, and one genuine
outlier we have kept in because the data insists on it.
Coffee shop – La Brioche Chaude – CAFÉ, Avenue Jean Médecin
The highest-rated name on this list, and the one with the least to say for itself:
La Brioche Chaude holds 4.8★ from 2,253 Google reviews and keeps no website
at all — no story, no manifesto, nothing to read before you go. What it has instead is the name, which is a
promise rather than a brand: hot brioche, on Avenue Jean Médecin, the tram-lined shopping artery that runs
straight down the middle of Nice. It is also the cheapest of the five by Google’s own price band, and the
earliest to open — 7:30 AM, every day of the week, through to 8:00 PM — which makes it the one on this list
that works as an actual morning habit rather than an outing. If you are catching a tram north or walking down
towards Place Masséna, it is directly on the way, at number 50.
Café Fino, Rue Gioffredo
The one with real history behind it, and it leads with it: Café Fino puts
“Depuis 1925” at the top of its own site, under the line “de Nice à Paris, avec amour” — a Nice house that
has since opened a second address on Rue des Mathurins in the 8th arrondissement. Its own framing is
“votre deuxième maison,” your second home, and the menu is built around that idea: a weekday card organised
around breakfast, lunch and the afternoon gap, and a wider one at the weekend where brunch takes over. Two
things it is unusually specific about. First, matcha, which it says has quietly become one of the most
recognised drinks in the house, worked through signature recipes and sold to take home as well as to drink
in. Second, its baristas, trained — in its own words — in Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom, which is
what it credits for its “Cafés Création” range rather than a straight espresso list. 4.7★ from 2,254
reviews at 39 Rue Gioffredo, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Monday to Saturday and to 5:00 PM on Sunday. Phone
04 93 79 58 17.
HOBO COFFEE, Vieux Nice
The only one of the five inside the old town, on Rue Sainte-Réparate a few steps from the cathedral that
gives the street its name, and the one built to catch you at any hour.
HOBO COFFEE describes itself as coffee, kitchen and bar in one room, and states
the operating rule plainly: “No reservation required, come any time — Service non stop all day.” That is
not a small detail in a French city where a kitchen typically shuts at 2:30 and reopens at 7. It is the
longest day on this list too, 8:30 AM to 10:30 PM daily, which means it is a breakfast place, a lunch place
and an evening drink in the same address. Its own highlights run to a smoked-salmon waffle on the brunch
side and chai and matcha lattes on the drinks side, and it sits inside a small Nice group that also runs
Hobo Juicy, a juice and smoothie counter, and Jaco, a coffee-bistro-bar. 4.5★ from 2,389 reviews at
5 bis Rue Sainte-Réparate. Phone 04 93 55 93 41.
Le Kawa – Brunch & Coffee Shop, Rue de Belgique
The most single-minded of the five. Le Kawa is a brunch room first and a
coffee counter second, and its hours say so: 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, seven days, closing before the aperitif
hour rather than trading through it. Its own description is modest — “a delicious selection of dishes
combining breakfast and lunch,” in “a warm and welcoming atmosphere” — and it runs a single address on Rue
de Belgique, the quiet street that drops from the station district towards Notre-Dame, rather than a chain.
One practical note it makes itself, worth knowing before you walk over: pets are not allowed inside, which
it puts down to hygiene rules. 4.6★ from 2,485 reviews, the second-largest review base here, at
23 Rue de Belgique. Phone 07 62 58 48 68.
Boccaccio, Rue Masséna
The outlier, and we have left it in rather than quietly dropping it, because it carries 5,201 reviews —
more than double any other name on this list — and because it is what a coffee search in central Nice
actually returns. Boccaccio is not a coffee shop. It calls itself a
“restaurant gastronomique et produits de la mer,” a seafood house, part of the Gustofamily group on the
Riviera, and it is the most expensive listing of the five by a wide margin. Its hours are a restaurant’s
hours, not a café’s: 12:00 to 2:30 PM and 7:00 to 11:00 PM, every day, with nothing in the morning and
nothing in the afternoon gap. What it is good for, in the context of this walk, is the coffee that ends a
long lunch — it sits on the pedestrian Rue Masséna a few steps from Place Masséna, at the exact midpoint of
the route between the other four. 4.4★ from 5,201 reviews at 7 Rue Masséna. Phone 04 20 97 11 55.
All five, on the map
The interactive map has all 32 qualifying coffee shops we found across central
Nice and the old town, these five marked and numbered, and a button that hands the walking route between them
straight to Google Maps on your phone.
Getting the most out of a coffee crawl in Nice
The geography is the easy part here: all five sit inside about 1.1 km, so this is one walk, on foot, no
transport needed — Avenue Jean Médecin down to Place Masséna and on into the old town is the whole route.
The harder part is the clock. Two of the five stop serving at 4:00 and 6:00 PM, one does not open until noon,
and only HOBO runs straight through to late, so the order you do them in matters more than the distance.
Check the current hours on each listing before setting off; a local eSIM from
Airalo means Google Maps and those listings work from the moment you land
at Nice Côte d’Azur rather than after you find WiFi, and a booked transfer from
Welcome Pickups takes the guesswork out of the airport-to-centre leg,
which is short but not obvious the first time. Most of these counters are small independents where the bill
is a few euros at a time, so a card that does not add a foreign transaction fee to every coffee is worth
having — a Wise card or a Revolut account
both solve it. If the crawl is one afternoon inside a longer Riviera trip,
Tiqets covers timed tickets for the museums and attractions in between,
and if you are staying long enough to have a regular table rather than a tourist one,
HousingAnywhere handles medium-term furnished rentals in Nice and a
few lessons on Preply will get you past ordering in English — which, on
Rue Sainte-Réparate in August, genuinely changes the service you get.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best coffee shop in Nice?
By rating weighted against review volume, La Brioche Chaude on Avenue Jean Médecin comes out on top at
4.8★ from 2,253 reviews, with Café Fino close behind at 4.7★ from 2,254. They answer different
questions: La Brioche Chaude is the cheap, early, everyday one, open from 7:30 AM daily; Café Fino is the
sit-down house with a hundred-year name, signature matcha and a barista programme behind the counter.
Which part of Nice has the most coffee shops?
The centre, overwhelmingly. Four of these five sit in the new town between the station district and Place
Masséna — Avenue Jean Médecin, Rue de Belgique, Rue Gioffredo and Rue Masséna — with Vieux Nice
contributing one, HOBO COFFEE on Rue Sainte-Réparate. The old town has plenty of cafés, but the
international coffee-shop format clusters on the newer, wider streets.
Can you get coffee early in the morning in Nice?
Yes, but not everywhere on this list. La Brioche Chaude opens at 7:30 AM every day and Le Kawa at 8:00 AM;
HOBO COFFEE follows at 8:30 AM and Café Fino not until 9:00 AM. Boccaccio does not open before noon at all.
If you want coffee before eight, Avenue Jean Médecin is the answer.
Why is a seafood restaurant on a coffee shop list?
Because it is what the data returned, and hiding that would be the less honest choice. Boccaccio ranks
here on 5,201 Google reviews, far more than any true coffee shop in the search, but it describes itself as a
gastronomic seafood restaurant and keeps restaurant hours. Treat it as the lunch or dinner stop on the route,
not as a place to get a morning espresso.
Are these coffee shops open on Sundays?
All five list Sunday hours in Google’s current data, which is not something you can assume in a French
city. Café Fino is the only one that shortens its Sunday, closing at 5:00 PM instead of 6:00. Hours still
shift seasonally in Nice more than the listings reflect, so check the individual profile on the map before a
winter visit.
- 1. Coffee shop – La Brioche Chaude – CAFÉ — 50 Av. Jean Médecin, 06000 Nice
- 2. Café Fino — 39 Rue Gioffredo, 06000 Nice
- 3. HOBO COFFEE — 5 bis Rue Sainte-Reparate, 06300 Nice
- 4. Le Kawa – Brunch & Coffee Shop Nice — 23 Rue de Belgique, 06000 Nice
- 5. Boccaccio — 7 Rue Massena, 06000 Nice