ORBIS city intelligence

Buying in Le Mans: Rillettes, and What Goes Beside Them

One product carries this city's name and one shop makes it. Everything else worth buying here assembles a table around it, which is the right shape for a city better known for a race.

Charcuterie Wiest: rillettes du Mans, and ask for the boudin too S1

Rillettes du Mans is coarser and paler than the Tours version most people have met. Buy it from this counter, which has produced it since 1943.

Buy the boudin as well, because a charcutier winning prizes for blood sausage is telling you something useful about the rest of the counter.

L'Atelier du Fromage: boards built to order, from AOP cheese S2

AOP is the protected origin scheme. A shop organised around it is buying by provenance rather than by price, and boards are built to order.

Say how many people you are feeding and what you are drinking, because a board assembled around rillettes is not the board you would build for wine alone.

Kiosqu'à Vin: growers' wine, and ask them to match the pork S3

A growers' wine means the person who farmed the fruit made the bottle, which is a different supply chain from a négociant label. Ask them to pour something against the rillettes before you choose.

Bring the rillettes question with you. Ask what they would pour beside it rather than choosing a region and hoping it works.

Maison Reignier: the gift shelf, trading since 1885 S4

This épicerie has held regional gift boxes and prepared traiteur trays since 1885. Use the traiteur counter, which is the French prepared-food service and the reason this works as one stop.

Ask which boxes travel and which need eating within a day. Ask whether a box can be assembled to your own choice rather than bought as made up.

Chocolaterie Bellanger makes pralines by hand and works chocolate tablets, which is the least troublesome thing on this page to carry home.