Nina, 28

I was born in Nice, in a family where the kitchen was the center of the universe. My grandmother — Nonna, as we called her — was from a small village in the hills behind Nice, and she cooked the way people in the south of France have cooked for centuries: with olive oil, with vegetables from the garden, with whatever the sea gave that morning. I grew up standing on a stool next to her, stirring the ratatouille, learning to make socca — that thin chickpea-flour pancake baked in a wood-fired oven — before I could ride a bike. The smell of her kitchen, garlic and thyme and olive oil, is my first memory.

I am 28 now and I am a chef. After culinary school in Nice, I worked in a few restaurants in the old town — Vieux Nice — learning the classics properly: salade niçoise done the right way (no potatoes, no green beans, whatever the tourists think), pissaladière, daube, petits farcis. Two years ago I became sous-chef at a small restaurant near the Cours Saleya, and this year I am stepping up to head chef. It is terrifying and thrilling. My cooking is rooted in Niçoise tradition but I like to play with it: a socca with a modern twist, a pissaladière reimagined, vegetables treated like the stars they are. For me, cooking is not about showing off — it is about making people feel at home, making them taste the sun and the sea.

Nice is the perfect city for a cook. The light here is unreal — that famous Mediterranean light that made painters move here — and the markets are my happy place. Every morning I walk through the Cours Saleya market before service: the flower stalls, the pyramids of tomatoes, the olives in every color, the socca man flipping his giant pans. I buy from the same producers every week and I know their names, their families, their opinions about the weather. On my days off, I go to the port to buy fish directly from the boats, or I drive up into the hills to a farm for goat cheese and honey. Food in Nice is not a hobby; it is the rhythm of the day. Breakfast is a café crème and a pain au chocolat at the bar, lunch is something simple, and dinner — dinner is sacred.

My weekends are for the things that are not work but are still, somehow, about food. Sunday mornings mean the market, then a long lunch at my parents’ house with my brother and his kids — Nonna’s recipes, arguments about the right way to make pan bagnat, too much rosé. In the afternoons I walk along the Promenade des Anglais, or I swim at the Plage des Ponchettes when it is warm enough. In the evenings, the apéritif: a glass of Bandol rosé on a terrace in the old town, watching the sky go pink over the Baie des Anges. I also love to bake — my apartment often smells of tarte au citron or fougasse — and I am slowly learning to make my own pasta, with mixed results.

I am warm, generous, a little fiery — I run a kitchen, after all — and I express love through food. If I like you, I will cook for you; that is the highest compliment I know. I am looking for a partner who loves to eat well and is not afraid of a long dinner. Someone who will come to the market with me on a Sunday morning, who will taste a new dish honestly and tell me what they really think, who understands that in my world, “let’s just grab something quick” is almost a tragedy. I want someone kind, funny, and grounded — someone who will sit with me on the Prom at sunset and share a socca straight from the paper. If you appreciate good olive oil the way other people appreciate fine wine, we are already halfway there.

Let me tell you a bit more about my life outside the kitchen. I sing — badly, but with enthusiasm — in a small choir that rehearses in a church in the old town, and our Christmas concert is a highlight of my year. I am also learning to grow herbs on my tiny balcony: basil, thyme, rosemary, and a very dramatic tomato plant that I talk to. My best friend and I have a tradition of a monthly “restaurant crawl” — we pick a street in Nice and try every place that looks interesting, from the fancy to the questionable. And once a year, I go back to my grandmother’s village in the hills for the olive harvest, pressing oil with the neighbors the way it has been done for generations. That connection — to the land, to the seasons, to the people who grow what I cook — is everything to me. I want a partner who feels that too: someone who will dance with me in the kitchen while the sauce simmers, who will close their eyes at the first bite and just smile. That is my love language, and it is always served warm.