A dense almond cake soaked and iced with rum, sweet enough to keep for weeks. It is the edible trace of Nantes as a colonial sugar and rum port, and every boulangerie in the centre sells its own version.
Where to eat it: 5 restaurants across 1 city.
The gâteau nantais is a 19th-century city cake built out of exactly what the port had too much of: cane sugar refined on the quays and rum shipped in from the Antilles. It was made heavy on both deliberately, because a cake carrying that much sugar and spirit keeps and travels. The result is a low, close-textured almond cake with a thin white rum icing set hard on top, sold in the same window as the berlingots. Nantes cannot tell that part of its food history without also naming the trade that funded it: the city was France's leading slave-trading port in the 18th century, and the sugar and rum economy of the quays is the direct reason this cake tastes the way it does.
Common allergens: Nuts, Eggs, Dairy, Gluten
Tip from the editors. The cake is better on day two and better again on day three. Do not ice it until it is cold, or the icing sinks in and stays tacky instead of setting hard.
Maison Juhel took the prize for the best gâteau nantais in 2022 and still bakes it on Boulevard Robert Schuman in the north west of the city.
Tip: It opens at 06:30 six days a week and closes on Tuesday, but Sunday is a morning service only, finishing at 13:30.
Worth the queue: Gâteau nantais
Vincent Guerlais keeps his Rue Franklin shop in Nantes stocked with chocolate work and a soft gâteau nantais finished under a white chocolate glaze.
Tip: The Franklin shop opens Sunday morning until 12:30, and the house also keeps a stall inside the Talensac market hall.
Worth the queue: Gâteau nantais
Esthète works seasonal fruit into precise entremets on Rue Mercœur in Nantes, with a chocolate counter, a tea salon and its own gâteau nantais.
Tip: The gâteau nantais runs about €3.40 for one and €19.80 for six shares; figs and elderflower drive the late summer card.
Worth the queue: Gâteau nantais
Maison Arlot Cheng bakes on Rue La Noue Bras de Fer in Nantes and gives Saturday over to brunch, bakery plates, cakes and coffee at the counter.
Order: A baker's plate with one of the counter cakes
Tip: The Saturday service runs from 10:00 to 14:00 and it is a bakery queue, not a table booking; the adzuki pastry is worth the wait.
Lulu le Bistrot is Ludovic Pouzelgues's relaxed second room on the Île de Nantes, bistro classics and Vendée snails under six-metre ceilings.
Signature: Oeufs mimosa, Sole meunière, Gâteau nantais
Tip: The €25 lunch is the value play; the house closes for summer congés from 15 August to 1 September.
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