What is actually Monégasque
Barbagiuan is the national dish: a small fried pastry stuffed with chard and ricotta, eaten in the hand. Socca, a chickpea-flour pancake cooked on a huge copper tray, is shared with Nice over the border. Fougasse monégasque is a sweet flatbread with anise and nuts.
This is Ligurian cooking — closer to Genoa than to Paris, and built on chickpeas, chard, olive oil and bread rather than on luxury.
Where people actually eat
The market at La Condamine, behind the harbour, has a covered hall of food stalls where residents and office workers eat standing up. It is the cheapest good food in the country by a wide margin.
The lanes of Monaco-Ville have small places aimed at visitors; Fontvieille has ordinary ones aimed at residents.
Monaco is expensive, but it is not uniformly expensive. The difference between the harbour front and two streets back is substantial.
Monaco-Ville
Port Hercule
Fontvieille