Sure, we'll never forget Clémence Lefeuvre and her ‘beurre blanc’ white butter sauce and we’ll enjoy again and again a ‘Gateau Nantais’ cake, but Nantes cuisine is much, much more. It has a unique spirit about it; its geographical position for starters as well as the characters that made it.
The cuisine in Nantes is above all a showcase for the abundant variety of local produce. There is also a network of high quality growers, market gardeners, fishermen, breeders, as well as cheese and wine makers. So it’s in this context that the chefs in Nantes in turn showcase this produce in their menus and in doing so build up a never-ending repertoire that never forgets that the main ingredient is the taste.
A taste of Nantes
The savoury tastes Nantes are: vegetables (lamb’s lettuce, carrots,leeks…) seafood (crabes, king prawns, oysters, mussels…) fish (sardines, seabass…), Loire fish (pike, perch, eels, elvers…), cheese (curé nantais, mâchecoulais).
Nantes’ sweetmeats: BN or LU biscuits, “berlingot” and “rigolette” sweets, butter scotch caramels, “fouace” starshaped sweet bread, Nantes cake, chocolates, ‘nantillais’ fruit cordial…
Muscadet wine sur Lie
At the start of the century, wine growers in the Nantes region used to keep the best barrel of wine for important family occasions. It was conserved without decanting, giving this “wedding barrel-wine” a particular character: it was more fresh tasting and had a more structured aroma. And thanks to this tradition, Muscadet aged “sur Lie” was born. It’s the only natural way of producing this wine - and it’s done in Nantes!
