We just finished breakfast in Nice and I had a couple cafe au laits, which was close to the Italian latte machiatto in my opinion. Mostly milk with a small amount of coffee added for the caffeine and as flavoring. The quality of the coffee itself is pretty unimportant, since its flavor can't cut through the milk enough to get noticed unless it is very strong.
This is one reason why the espresso style works so well in the latte, it has a strong enough flavor to cut through the milk and be noticed. It is still very muted, and any subtlety in the flavors are all lost. Yes, there is subtlety in good espresso, and yes it is lost in the coffee milkshakes a lot of people love.
That works to the advantage of coffee providers, since they don't have to differentiate based on quality of coffee (which is very difficult at large scale) but on the rest of the ingredients that the coffee itself accompanies.
We only got one night and maybe half a day total in Nice, which is a big shame and we will definitely be back here again for a longer vacation on the French Riveria. Based on our one night I can heartily recommend Hotel Felix (which we got from the Fodor's 2004 guide to France). I'm writing this sitting on our balcony over the pedestrian mall area after having had an excellent breakfast at the patisserie next door (where in a stroke of genius the hotel proprietor outsources his breakfasts to), and all I can think is how nice it would be to stay and explore this area more.
However, the vacation we have planned has us heading to the Provence area next. I'm sure we're going to have a fantastic time.
How good was breakfast? While eating I quoted History of the World Part I: It is good to be the king.
So far my opinion is that Italian coffee is far and above the best, maybe in the world for general quality level. French coffee quality is about on par with American, hardly anything special.
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