The 5 Old Town Bar You Can’t Miss in Nice
Ask for an old town bar in Nice and you get an answer that quietly corrects the question. Vieux Nice’s inner
lanes — Rue Droite, Cours Saleya, the tangle behind the Palais de Justice — are full of narrow rooms that pour
until late, but the places that actually hold up under scrutiny sit on the Old Town’s southern edge, along the
seafront where Quai des États-Unis runs into the Promenade des Anglais. Three came out of our search of Nice’s
bar-and-terrace listings, and the striking thing is how tightly they cluster: all three carry exactly the same
4.1★ Google rating, all three are marked at Google’s most expensive price band, and all three sit within
about 800 metres of each other — a ten-minute walk end to end, sea on your right the whole way. What separates
them is not quality but format: a full beach club with sun loungers and a lounge programme, a chef-led
restaurant-bar that stays open until half past two in the morning, and a ninth-floor rooftop where the entire
menu is built around olive oil.
Plage Beau Rivage, Quai des États-Unis
Start with the one that more people have an opinion about than the other two combined: Plage Beau Rivage, 4.1★ from 3,818 Google reviews. It is a beach club before it is
a bar, and it does not pretend otherwise — its own site opens with the line votre place au soleil, your
place in the sun, and its navigation runs to headings like “legendary sunbathing” and “the beach to be” rather
than a drinks list. You rent a mattress (the tariffs are published, which is not always the case on this stretch
of coast), and the restaurant sits behind the loungers under a chef’s direction, serving what the house calls a
carte gourmande et méditerranéenne built on fresh, local, seasonal produce with, in its own words, an
unobstructed view over the Promenade des Anglais. The reason it belongs on a bar list at all is the separate
lounge, which runs its own programme of themed evenings and takes private and corporate bookings — so the same
address that is a sun-lounger operation at two in the afternoon is a drinks venue at nine. Open daily,
10:00 AM to 11:30 PM, at 107 Quai des États-Unis; reservations on 04 92 00 46 80.
Babel Babel, Quai des États-Unis
The late one, and by a wide margin. Babel Babel closes at 2:30 AM every single
night of the week — three hours later than Beau Rivage and four and a half later than Elaïo — and opens at
10:00 AM on weekdays, 9:00 AM at weekends, which is the whole pitch compressed into a set of hours. Its own
description is four words long and does the job: face à la mer, du matin au soir, facing the sea, from
morning to night, “for lunch, dinner, or simply to share a drink.” The kitchen is run by Bastien Mottet, who
holds the Meilleur Apprenti de France title, working with what the house describes as a young, dynamic team on
creative, generous cooking with character; brunch runs from 10:00 to 15:00 and the service rolls on from there
without a break, under the sign-off Babel Babel, à toute heure. One practical note straight from the
house: it asks guests to be punctual for reservations so that everyone’s sitting works out — a small thing, but
it tells you this is a room that turns tables rather than one you drift into. 4.1★ from 1,706 reviews at
61 Quai des États-Unis, on 04 93 55 74 19.
Restaurant Elaïo, Promenade des Anglais
The one that is not at sea level. Elaïo sits on the ninth-floor rooftop of Le
Méridien Nice at 1 Promenade des Anglais — the address where the Old Town’s seafront quai becomes the
Promenade — and it is the only venue here where the drink comes with the Baie des Anges laid out below rather
than beside you. The name is the point: elaio is olive oil, and the house builds its whole Mediterranean
menu around that single ingredient, with Chef Marc Salichon cooking to Lucangeli olive oils and a weekly menu
that changes every Monday, from €35. For anyone here for the bar rather than the table, the schedule matters
more than the carte: beverage service runs non-stop from 11:00 AM to a 6:30 PM last call, with a continuous
Mediterranean tapas service filling the 2:30 to 6:30 PM stretch and a list of signature cocktails alongside the
classics — in other words, this is an afternoon and early-evening rooftop, not a nightcap. Breakfast starts at
11:00 AM at €8.50 if you want the view before the crowd. 4.1★ from 855 reviews, the smallest review base
of the three; open daily 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM, on 04 97 03 40 37.
All three, on the map
The interactive map has all three venues marked and numbered along the Old Town
seafront, with a button that hands the walking route between them straight to Google Maps on your phone. It is a
genuinely short walk — roughly 300 metres from Elaïo to Beau Rivage and another 500 on to Babel Babel — so
doing all three in an evening is a stroll, not an expedition.
Getting the most out of a seafront bar crawl in Nice
These three sit close enough together that the walk is the easy part; the friction is everything around it. If
you are visiting rather than living here, a local eSIM from Airalo means
maps, menus and the tram app work from the moment you land at Nice Côte d’Azur rather than after you have hunted
down café Wi-Fi, and a booked transfer through Welcome Pickups removes
the one part of the trip most likely to go wrong — the airport, which is a short hop west along this same
seafront. All three venues carry Google’s most expensive price marker, so a foreign-transaction fee on every
round genuinely compounds over a night out; a Wise card charges you in euros and
takes that variable off the table. If the bar crawl is one evening inside a longer Riviera itinerary, Tiqets handles the timed tickets for the museums and attractions you would
otherwise queue for during the day. And because ordering at a Niçois bar in French changes the reception you get
more than almost anything else you can prepare, a few sessions with a tutor on Preply before the trip is worth more than a phrasebook.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is the best bar in Nice’s Old Town?
On Google’s numbers there is no gap to speak of: Plage Beau Rivage, Babel Babel and Elaïo all sit at exactly
4.1★. What separates them is the review base and the format — Beau Rivage has 3,818 reviews and is a full
beach club with a lounge programme, Babel Babel has 1,706 and is a chef-led restaurant-bar open to 2:30 AM, and
Elaïo has 855 and is a ninth-floor rooftop that stops serving drinks at 6:30 PM. Pick by what you want the
evening to be, not by the rating.
Which one stays open latest?
Babel Babel, comfortably. It runs to 2:30 AM seven nights a week. Beau Rivage closes at 11:30 PM daily and
Elaïo at 10:00 PM, with its bar taking last orders at 6:30 PM — so anything after midnight in this cluster means
Babel Babel.
Are these actually inside Vieux Nice?
They sit on its seafront edge rather than in the inner lanes. Babel Babel and Beau Rivage are both on Quai des
États-Unis, the road that forms the Old Town’s southern boundary, and Elaïo is at 1 Promenade des Anglais where
that quai turns into the Promenade. All three are a couple of minutes’ walk from Cours Saleya, so you can
combine them with the deeper Old Town easily — they are just not tucked-away cellar bars.
Do I need to book?
All three run reservation systems, and Babel Babel explicitly asks guests to arrive punctually so that
everyone’s booking works out, which is a fair signal that walk-ins are not the assumption at peak times. The
direct numbers are 04 92 00 46 80 for Beau Rivage, 04 93 55 74 19 for Babel Babel and 04 97 03 40 37 for
Elaïo.
Are they expensive?
Google marks all three at its highest price band, which is what you would expect of seafront addresses on this
stretch. The published figures give some shape to it: Elaïo lists a weekly lunch menu from €35 and breakfast at
€8.50, and Beau Rivage publishes its sun-lounger tariffs on its own site. Neither of those is a drinks price, so
treat them as an indication of the bracket rather than a quote.
- 1. Plage Beau Rivage Nice — 107 Quai des États-Unis, 06300 Nice
- 2. Babel Babel — 61 Quai des États-Unis, 06300 Nice
- 3. Restaurant Elaïo — 1 Prom. des Anglais, 06000 Nice