10 Best Local Dishes from Bordeaux

Foie gras is a delicacy made with fatty duck liver. The taste is unique, rich, buttery and delicate. This Bordeaux staple is often served at parties, friendly gatherings, and formal events.

You’ll find foie gras in countless preparations, including cold, seasoned and seared. Grocery stores and charcuteries always have it in stock, in varieties like mousse, pâté and parfait. While it's served as a spread, you can also see it as a rich garnish on meat at some restaurants. Sample foie gras on your visit to Bordeaux to discover which version is your favorite.

Aquitaine caviar has a reputation of being one of the world's finest, thanks to the time and patience used in its farming. The Siberian sturgeon are raised for 8 years before their eggs, called perlita, are ready to be harvested.

The colors of the caviar range from shades of gray to light chestnut. It has a slightly salty flavor with buttery and nutty hints. Like a fine wine, this caviar gets better with time. It is aged for at least 3 months, allowing for the taste to mature. It is served chilled with blini (small pancake or crépe).

Bordeaux has preserved the exclusivity of its Cap Ferret oysters through strict production quality. The small producers, called ostréiculteurs, maintain high standards using age-old methods. Although they produce about 10,000 tons of oysters every year, you won’t find this delicacy outside the Nouvelle Aquitaine region. The oysters aren’t exported or sold in grocery stores, making them a must-try when you visit a Bordeaux restaurant or market. 

Cap Ferret oysters are sold by the plate, usually accompanied by bread and butter. Enjoy them in their simplicity with a squeeze of lemon, or as the locals prefer, with red wine vinegar and chopped shallots. 

Boeuf de Bazas is a tender and flavorful marbled beef from a protected breed of cow. It is produced in less than 300 dedicated farms and certified by a red label indicating traceability and the raising method.

Like many local Bordeaux delicacies, Boeuf de Bazas is exclusive to the region. Only a handful of butchers are approved to sell it, and you won’t find it in grocery stores. Try the specialty marbled beef broiled, roasted, or even cold when you visit a Bordeaux restaurant. Thanks to its smooth, slightly nutty, the beef is served with just green peppers and a traditional mustard sauce.

Pauillac lamb shoulder is known locally as l’épaule dágneau de Pauillac. It’s a suckling lamb native to Bordeaux that's raised on mother’s milk since birth, then slaughtered after a maximum of 75 days. The result is a special treat of delicate and fine marbled meat, which has a lovely pale shade of pink.

Try rich and tender lamb shoulder as one of many scrumptious preparations, like braised and paired with roasted artichokes, or slow roasted with olive oil, garlic, onion and parsley.

Lamprey à la bordelaise is a must-try stew in Bordeaux. It’s a local favorite that’s delicious, hearty, and rich in tradition. Lamprey is a fish that resembles an eel. When cooked, its flavor isn’t fishy at all, with a texture resembling a tender steak.

In Bordeaux, lamprey is cooked in a stew with potatos, shallots, onions, leeks, red wine, and sometimes cured ham. Some restaurants add cognac for extra flavor. It’s one not for the faint of heart as the special ingredient is the lamprey’s own blood.

Porcini mushrooms, or les cèpes, grow wild in Bordeaux due to the perfect mix of the maritime climate and pine forests. The mushrooms grow big, rich and meaty in these conditions. You can find fresh porcinis in little roadside stands in autumn, as well as at markets and gourmet food stores.

The mushrooms remarkably retain their flavor when dried, so chefs often use them year-round. Visit a Bordeaux restaurant and try the rich, slightly nutty mushrooms, usually prepared with a mix of butter, lemon, olive oil, garlic, shallots and parsley. 

Asperges du Blayais is a type of asparagus with white stalks and pretty purple tips. It has a distinctively sweet taste that's attributed to the richness of the black sand soils, or terroir, by the Garonne River.

Many producers based around the riverbank farm this specialty asparagus. Bordeaux even has an annual festival dedicated to this white asparagus. You can try it drizzled in olive oil and pomegranate seeds or served with chanterelle mushrooms.

Cannelés are little sweet cakes that Bordeaux locals have enjoyed for centuries. They’re are linked to Bordeaux’s wine history and the practice of processing with egg whites, which left behind a lot of unused egg yolks. The locals cleverly invented these treats by combining the leftover yolks with flour, sugar, vanilla and rum.

Cannelés are named after the fluted copper molds they are baked in. These tiny cakes resemble tiny Bundt cakes and have an appealing caramel color. They are crispy on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside. Cannelés is so prided that the recipe is legally protected in Bordeaux.

Dune Blanches are cute cream puffs that became an overnight sensation after the son of baker Paul Lucas invented them in 2008. He lined the little white puffs on a tray and named them after the white dunes lining the region’s Atlantic coast. The people of Bordeaux loved them so much, the name was quickly trademarked. 

These delectable little pastries are filled with whipped cream and dusted with powdered sugar. You will find the original version of Dune Blanches at their namesake shop in Bordeaux.