LE TEXAN: THE MOST INCONGRUOUS RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD'S MOST GLAMOROUS PRINCIPALITY

The story of Le Texan begins, as so many good Monaco stories do, with Princess Grace. Grace Kelly -- Philadelphia-born, Hollywood-trained, married into one of Europe's oldest royal families -- found herself in the 1950s living in a two-square-kilometre principality on the French Riviera, surrounded by the finest French cuisine on earth, and missing Tex-Mex food. This is, if you think about it, a very human thing. You can have access to everything, and still want the thing you grew up with.

She mentioned this to Kate Powers, an American expat who had moved to Monaco from the United States and who understood, instinctively, what the Princess was describing. Powers, along with her brother Mike, opened Le Texan in La Condamine -- the working-class harbour district, not Casino Square, which tells you everything about the restaurant's attitude. It was not trying to be Monaco. It was trying to be Texas. In Monaco. Which, it turned out, was exactly what Monaco needed.

Peter Kurth, writing in 2025, called Le Texan "the Riviera's answer to Cheers." This is accurate. The place has the specific warmth of a restaurant that knows it doesn't need to impress anyone -- it has already impressed everyone who matters. Every table is full. The noise level is cheerful rather than deafening. The staff greet strangers with the friendliness of people who have been doing this for decades and have decided, collectively, that they enjoy it.

The clientele is the most democratic in Monaco. Michael Douglas has eaten here. Boris Becker has eaten here. Members of the Grimaldi family -- the Prince's family, "Up There" in Monaco's social geography -- eat here without reservations, and the staff will joke about it: "What was the name again?" This is the blue-jeans version of Monaco, the casual extension of the larger experience. Fashionable, predictable, dependable, and -- because it is, at its heart, a Tex-Mex joint -- gloriously incongruous.

The margaritas are the reason you come. They are described, consistently and across multiple decades of reviews, as the best on the Cote d'Azur. This is a significant claim on a coastline that takes its cocktails seriously, but nobody has successfully disputed it. They are made properly -- tequila, triple sec, fresh lime, salt rim -- without the shortcuts that lesser establishments take when they think nobody is paying attention. In Monaco, somebody is always paying attention.

Order a pitcher. You will not regret this. The third one is inadvisable but inevitable, which is, as it happens, the Just Gerald standard for any cocktail worth recommending.

The menu is Tex-Mex, executed with the confidence of a kitchen that has been doing this for sixty years and has no intention of changing. Nachos, enchiladas, fajitas, chilli. The kind of food that is not trying to be anything other than what it is, which in Monaco -- where everything is trying to be something -- is a radical act.

The portions are generous by Riviera standards, which is to say they are normal by any other standard. The prices are reasonable by Monaco standards, which is to say they are still Monaco prices, but you will not leave feeling robbed. Kate Powers, who ran the restaurant until her death in August 2023 at the age of -- well, she was Monaco, so we won't say -- understood that the point of Le Texan was never the food. The food was the excuse. The point was the room, the noise, the margaritas, and the feeling that you were somewhere that had earned its reputation the old-fashioned way: by being genuinely good, for a very long time.

Kate Powers died in August 2023 after a short illness. She had lived in Monaco since the 1950s, had founded Le Texan and later Stars'N'Bars, had become a Monegasque citizen in 2009, and had been awarded the Order of Saint Charles -- Monaco's highest honour, given to outstanding citizens. Stars'N'Bars, the family-friendly sports bar she founded with her partner Didier Rubiolo, had already closed in January 2023, after nearly thirty years.

Le Texan continues. It is, at this point, one of the oldest continuously operating restaurants in Monaco, and certainly the only one that was founded on the recommendation of a Hollywood princess who missed burritos. This seems like exactly the right legacy.

Go. Order the margaritas. Raise a glass to Kate Powers, who understood that the best restaurants are never really about the food.