Detour, Grasse

We were the first table at Detour on opening night. That is the kind of detail that does not usually find its way into a restaurant review — first nights are full of nerves and small things that go sideways, and most reviewers wait three months before they put a place on the page. We are putting Detour on the page now because the people behind it are not new at this. Detour is the kind of restaurant whose first month is going to be every bit as good as its third, and the proximity to the opening is the proof of the point we want to make about it.

The proof, in three sentences: the Executive Chef and partner is Kendall Lane. The sommelier is her husband, Ross. The owners — Makenna Held and Chris Nylund — are the team behind La Pitchoune: Cooking in France, the cooking school and television show that has been working out of Mas de la Pitchoune for years, and they lived in Valbonne for years before opening Detour, which is how we know them. None of them are guessing.

What that means in practice is that Detour, on its first night, was already cooking like a place three years in. We are going to tell you why we think this restaurant matters now, what to order, when to go, and how to think about Grasse — which is a famously unfocused dining town — through the lens of one restaurant we believe is going to redefine it.

The three-o'clock dinner

We will tell you about the food in a moment. First, the structural thing about Detour that makes it different from any other restaurant on this stretch of the Côte d'Azur:

It opens at 3 pm.

Most restaurants in the south of France do not open for dinner until at least 7 pm. Often 7:30. Often 8. There is a long, defended logic to this — the lunch service runs until 2:30 or 3, the kitchen breaks for a few hours, and dinner begins when the light does. We respect the logic, and we have been honoring it for fifteen years. But it has a cost. If you are an early eater, traveling with children, off a flight that landed at 2 pm, or walking out of a Cannes screening at 4 hungry, your options for years have been pizza, McDonald's, or wait. There has not been a third option.

Detour is the third option. The kitchen is open from 3 pm onward, the bar from earlier still, and the menu structure is built around the early-arrival reality: a curated Nibbles menu for snacking with a glass at 3:30 or 4, a full lunch-into-dinner transition through the late afternoon, and a proper dinner service that runs into the evening. You can show up at 3:15 for a glass of something cold and the popcorn, or at 7 pm for a four-course meal with wine pairings. The room flexes both ways, and the kitchen does too.

This is not a small thing. It is the most overdue restaurant innovation we have seen in this region in years.

The Nibbles

The Nibbles menu — the small bites available all afternoon — is itself worth the drive from Valbonne. On opening night we ate the entire menu, served as a tasting. We will be ordering off it directly on every return.

The popcorn is the best either of us has ever eaten. We do not know what Kendall does to it; the answer is probably "everything she does to everything else, which is care." It is salted and finished with something we have not yet identified, and we have not asked her, because part of the pleasure of a restaurant is letting the kitchen keep its secrets.

The Nibbles Mix — local nuts and dried fruit — is the best in the same way. The "Mix" is not a packet poured into a bowl; it is a curation, and the producers behind it are real producers, named below.

The Crudité — radish, endive, leek hummus, housemade cracker — arrived as part of the tasting menu on opening night, which means we did not have to order it twice. We would have, if we could have. The leek hummus alone is worth the drive. We do not know how to write more clearly about a hummus than that.

For dinner: the Lettuce Wraps — seasonal vegetables, tahini, guinea fowl, soy gastrique — was the standout of the night and is what we will order on every return. They can be made vegetarian on request, and the vegetarian version is not a compromise. It is a different dish that happens to be on the same plate.

Ross's wine pairings are not optional, and they are not generic. Ross has been buying wines for years before there was a list to put them on; the cellar he is building reads like a person who has lived with these bottles in a private capacity for a long time and is, finally, getting to share them with people. Ask him what he is excited about. He will tell you.

The producers

When we say Detour cooks the actual Provence — as opposed to "modern Provençal" in the perfumery-town tourist register — this is what we mean.

The cheese is from Fromage 365 in Valbonne, five minutes from where we live, and it is in fact the same cheese person we use for our own pantry. The herbs and edible flowers are from Ferme de Douces Fleurs, ten minutes from Detour itself in Grasse. The skyr and goat cheese come from La Ferme Pelissero in Tende, which is the village right before the Italian border on the road to Limone Piemonte — we wrote about this corner of the Maritime Alps in Italy's Other Alps on the @aforetravel feed. Vegetables are organic, from Domaine Entre Terre & Miel in St. Cézaire-sur-Siagne and Vidal Producteurs in the hills between Fréjus and Mouans-Sartoux. Almonds and chickpeas come from Gaec de la Borie in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Walnuts and spelt from Valdinoix in the Hautes-Alpes. Orange flower and oranges from Les Fruits D'Or de Vallau in Vallauris. Even the beverages are local — beer and lemonade from Brasserie du Comté in Nice, and artisanal sober-friendly sodas from UMA in Bresson.

Ten producers. Every one of them named. Every one of them within sixty miles of the kitchen. We have not seen another restaurant in this region come close to this kind of ingredient discipline, and the difference is on the plate the moment you put a fork into anything.

The room

Grasse is a perfume town that does not, in our reading of it over the years, have a great food scene. The center is built around tourist traffic — most menus here lean on lavender, honey, and "Provençal" tropes for the day-trippers coming up from Cannes. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. Detour is not one of those exceptions in the apologetic sense; Detour is its own thing, sitting where it sits, doing what it does.

The room is not large. The materials are warm. There is an open kitchen visible from most tables, and from a seat at the bar, you can watch Kendall plate. Service is unhurried. The pace of the meal is set by the kitchen, not by the table, and we have come to think of this as a virtue.

The minor critique we have not softened

Detour is going to fill up. The room is small, the word is going to spread quickly, and Kendall and Ross are not the kind of operators who chase capacity at the expense of the experience. Reserve well in advance. Walk-ins at 3 pm on a Tuesday will probably work for the first few months; walk-ins at 8 pm on a Saturday already do not. Plan accordingly.

Grasse itself is twenty minutes northwest of Valbonne. The drive up — through the perfume hills, the lavender appearing later in June, the road climbing through the Alpes-Maritimes scrub — is part of the experience. We would not order an Uber for this one. Drive yourself, take the windows down, plan to be at the bar by 4.

Practical

Detour — Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, France · detourresto.com

• Hours: From 3 PM. Confirm current schedule via the restaurant.
• Reservations: Recommended in advance, especially for evening service.
• Drive time from Valbonne: ~20 minutes northwest.
• Drive time from Cannes: ~25 minutes north.
• Drive time from Nice Airport: ~40 minutes.
• The team: Executive Chef & Partner — Kendall Lane. Sommelier — Ross. Owners — Makenna Held & Chris Nylund (also of La Pitchoune: Cooking in France).
• Our standing order: The popcorn. The Nibbles Mix. The Crudité (radish, endive, leek hummus, housemade cracker). The Lettuce Wraps for dinner. Whatever Ross is excited about for the wine.

Le Journal lands every other Sunday, with more from the south of France. To get it in your inbox, subscribe at [afo.re](https://afo.re). To plan your own Provence week with a Detour reservation built in, [DM us @aforetravel](https://instagram.com/aforetravel) — fourteen days' notice.