It’s fish and chips in the UK, moules-frites in Brittany, calamari in Italy … But in Nice, and most of France’s Côte d’Azur, the quintessential seaside snack is pan bagnat – a substantial round pain de campagne generously filled with tuna, egg, tomato, onion and olives, and drenched in garlicky vinaigrette. It’s basically a salade niçoise stuffed into a loaf, the copious dressing making the bread wet (bagnat, in Niçois dialect).

Chef Yoni Saada is the owner of acclaimed restaurant Miniatures in Paris’s swish 16th arrondissement, and a 2013 finalist in French reality TV show TopChef. But he lived in Provence as a youth and woke up one morning longing for his favourite Friday lunch – a pan bagnat by the sea in the fishing port of Cassis, near Marseille. Unable to find a decent version in Paris, he decided to open a cafe/takeaway, Bagnard, dedicated to the Niçois speciality in the busier second arrondissement, a few blocks north of the Louvre.

Yoni’s pans bagnats have gone down well with Parisians, (as well as classic tuna, he does veggie ones, with hummus, and versions with sardines or Spanish dried beef). But this is a dish meant for bright, hot, Mediterranean days. To track down a good one in Provence, try Pâtisserie d’Aix on the corner of rues d’Aix and Nationale (takeaway only) in Marseille, or (with seats inside and out but still good value) Bistrot de Jules in Antibes.

The snack’s spiritual home, however, is Nice: Kiosque TinTin on Place de la Libération offers pan bagnats big enough for two, beaded glasses of chilled rose, and a ringside seat on the local farmers’ market.