Breton cider is the drink poured with galettes: dry cidre brut or gently sweet cidre doux, low in alcohol, cloudy, and served in a bolée, the wide handleless ceramic cup.
Where to eat it: 4 restaurants across 1 city.
Cider replaced beer as the everyday Breton drink from the sixteenth century onwards as apple orchards spread across the peninsula, and by the nineteenth century Brittany and Normandy between them accounted for most of France's production. Breton cider is made from bittersweet cider apples rather than dessert fruit, fermented slowly and often bottled with residual sugar, which is why cidre doux can come in under 3% alcohol. The bolée, a shallow earthenware bowl with no handle, is still standard in Rennes crêperies. Cornouaille in Finistère is the one protected Breton cider AOC; most of what Rennes drinks is farmhouse cider from Ille-et-Vilaine.
Common allergens: Sulphites
Tip from the editors. Dessert apples make thin cider. If you cannot get bittersweet cider varieties, add a handful of crab apples for the tannin the drink needs.
La Rozell serves galettes non-stop from 11:00 under the beams of a half-timbered house in Rennes, with a shaded sixty-table terrace on Rue de Penhoët.
Try: Galettes and crêpes non-stop
Tip: The rare crêperie serving between lunch and dinner and up to 22:30 seven days; no dead-hours gamble here.
Ouzh Taol, Breton for at the table, folds burger-galettes and classic buckwheat rounds in a small room on Rue Saint-Melaine in Rennes, best booked ahead.
Signature: Burger-galettes
Order: The burger-galette, the house's cross of two comfort foods
Crêperie du Pont-Levis faces the 15th-century Portes Mordelaises in Rennes, IGP Breton buckwheat galettes at the oldest crêperie address in the city.
Signature: IGP buckwheat galettes by the ramparts
Order: A 100 percent Breton IGP buckwheat galette facing the medieval gates
La Gavotte holds the crêperie corner of Rue Saint-Georges in Rennes, open seven days with an andouille, apple and camembert galette as its calling card.
Signature: Andouille, apple and camembert galette
Order: The Guémené andouille galette with apples, camembert and mustard ice cream
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