Great Restaurants and Sweet Treats in Bordeaux, France
Our little group enjoying an afternoon tea break on the terrace at La Diplomate. Bordeaux, France. August 8, 2021.
I’d known Bordeaux as an excellent wine region, but I hadn’t known much about the city or the area’s gastronomy before we visited.
Fortunately—because I don’t care much for wine—the Bordelaise food and treats impressed me. Bordeaux abounds with creative and unique sweet treats and with gut-warming casual restaurants and heavenly fine dining.
I guess it makes sense that a region known for its fine wine needs to have food to match its hauteur, n’est-ce pas?
Restaurant Recommendations in Bordeaux
In every restaurant we visited in Bordeaux, we wore “casual chic” and felt completely aligned with the rest of the guests in attire. (That said, you may want to read my guide on having a good restaurant experience in France before you go.)
On two nights in Bordeaux, we ate at La Tupina, a casual, country inn–style restaurant. The first time, we visited because our AirBNB hosts recommended it as a restaurant in the neighborhood (and it showed up in our Michelin restaurant guide as well). We enjoyed it enough that when we wanted a hearty meal later in the trip, we decided to return rather than explore further.
La Tupina offers hearty fare via a limited menu of seasonal yet sizeable main courses and sides to share around the table. I ordered the roast chicken on our first visit and the duck on our second visit, both times with sides of seasonal vegetables. Both meals were delicious and plentiful enough to satisfy a hearty appetite sparked by long, active days walking and climbing around Bordeaux.
On our first visit, we agreed to sit on a small balcony over the outdoor terrace—and on the second visit, we asked for an inside table. Why the change? La Tupina has a corner location, and the two streets crossing it have a lot of traffic. The street noise hindered an idyllic meal. The interior table we had the second time felt much calmer and cozier, too.
And as a final recommendation: We had dinner one night at Au Bistrot, near the Marché du Capuchins. As with La Tupina, the restaurant offers casual, tummy-warming foods in plentiful quantities and has a welcoming wait staff.
The host at Au Bistrot seated us at a small table in the back of the front room, near the open kitchen, the door to the back of the restaurant, and windows open onto the busy street outside. The combination of these elements made the ambiance around our table a bit loud, crowded, and hectic.
If we had gone back, we would have asked to sit in one of the other rooms of the restaurant, hidden behind what I’d thought was the hallway to the bathroom. (We didn’t realize the other rooms existed until we saw them via the side windows when leaving the restaurant after our dinner.) If you go, ask for a better table than we had!
Treats (Mainly Sweets!) to Eat in Bordeaux
I rarely eat sweets these days, which says something from a person who used to have the nickname “Cookie Monster.” I guess our tastes truly do change with age. As do our bodies: I’ve grown a lot more sensitive to sugar than I was in my younger days.
Nevertheless, I always look forward to the patisseries in France. And my patisserie favorites trend toward the classics. Give me madeleines and financiers and macarons, mille feuilles with crispy puff pastry, and saint-honorés with caramelized sugar and fluffy cream every single day while I’m in France, please. I can’t get good ones anywhere else, so why not?
We didn’t find many classically French patisseries in Bordeaux, which surprised us. Bordeaux crushed my mille-feuille dreams. The patisseries we did find tended toward the trendy rather than the classic.
After somewhat (though not completely) quashing my disappointment, I ventured out to find other options and discovered several unique, Bordeaux-only choices to tempt me instead:
Bordeaux has decided to claim the cannelé as its regional dessert, and you’ll find endless cannelé bakeries from which to choose while in Bordeaux—some more touristy and commercial than others. Cassonade near the Grosse Cloche on Rue Saint-James (look for the green sign on the shop) became our go-to supplier.
As a cookie connoisseur, I have long declared cookies in Europe a disaster. However, a friend’s strong recommendation pushed me to try the American-style cookies at Be My Cookie. Can’t lie: This bakery makes the best cookies I’ve found anywhere in Europe so far. I loved all the flavors we tried, but you can’t go wrong with the classic chocolate-chip-and-walnut cookie, which this bakery calls the “tradi.”
Another treat I would never have found without the guidance of my friend in Bordeaux: Dunes Blanches from Chez Pascal. We dashed over there just before closing on my last evening in town and the pastries deserved the rush. The dunes blanches are light, choux pastry filled with an airy, incredibly light whipped cream, dusted with powdered sugar.
Though less delicious than the other options on my treats list, you can’t visit the village of Saint-Emilion, in the Bordeaux region not far from the city, and not try its version of macarons. Nothing like the macarons we all know and love (including me), the authentic macarons from Saint-Emilion come affixed to cardboard and have an air more like a light almond cookie or biscuit than a traditional fluffy, jam-filled pastry-style macaron.
And finally, though we loved it more for its unique (and delicious) range of teas and its relaxing atmosphere, La Diplomate does offer house-made cakes as well to eat while you take a pause. If you need a break visiting Bordeaux, absolutely visit this cozy tea shop. (We went back on two separate occasions to try different things!)
Food to Equal the Wine
In other Bordeaux food reviews, I confess to feeling less than wowed by the highly recommended Marché des Capuchins. Absolutely visit it one morning if you love European markets, but I can’t classify it as one of the better covered markets we’ve visited in France. If you must choose between things to do in Bordeaux—and you’ll find many—you can skip this one.
Yet that minor quibble aside, the food and treats in Bordeaux will delight you. Expect delicious wine in Bordeaux—and with reason!— and count on equally delicious food and treats to accompany it.
While in Bordeaux, don’t stop only for the eating and the drinking! See some of the Bordeaux region’s main sites via a day trip or two not linked to all things wine and stay in the city to see Bordeaux’s main tourist attractions and historical sites of interest.
And to help you organize your trip, read my guide on planning a vacation in Bordeaux and in the Bordeaux region.