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🍽️ Food & Drink

Reims for Food & Drink Lovers — 3 Days of Chalk Cellars, Pink Biscuits and Grower Champagne

Boulingrin's art deco market halls, biscuits roses baked since 1756, andouillette brasseries and grower champagne by the glass.

📍 Reims, France 📅 3-day itinerary

Reims eats and drinks on chalk. The biscuit rose has been double-baked here since 1756, andouillette AAAAA and jambon de Reims anchor the brasseries, and grower champagne pours by the glass in bars a short walk from the cathedral.

Local Markets & Neighbourhood Food

09:00
🥬 Halles du Boulingrin

Emile Maigrot's 1929 parabolic concrete hall reopened in 2012 after a 24-year closure. Trading Wednesday, Friday and Saturday roughly 07:00–14:00: Chaource and Langres cheeses, jambon de Reims, boudin blanc and Marne honey.

⏱ 2-3 hours 💶 Free entry; €10-20 for market snacks
Saturday is the only day the outdoor stalls along Rue de Mars fill out — arrive before 10:00 and the cheesemongers will still cut tasting slivers.
12:00
🍽️ Brasserie Le Boulingrin

Serving since 1925 opposite the halles, with mosaic floor, zinc bar and mirrored panels intact. Oysters by the half-dozen, andouillette AAAAA grilled in mustard sauce, and jambon de Reims in parsleyed aspic.

⏱ 1.5 hours 💶 €25 lunch formule, €35-45 à la carte
Ask for the andouillette with a glass of Coteaux Champenois rouge from Bouzy — the still red wine locals drink when they want a break from bubbles.
14:30
🍫 La Petite Friande

Chocolatier on Cours Langlet known for bouchons de champagne: foil-wrapped chocolate corks filled with marc de champagne ganache. Also stocks champagne truffles, croquignoles and boxed biscuits roses. Tuesday to Saturday.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Boxes from €12; 250g assortment around €22
17:00
🧀 La Cave aux Fromages, Place du Forum

Affineur ripening Champagne-Ardenne cheeses in its own cellars — Chaource, Langres washed in marc, Maroilles and Rocroi. Staff assemble tasting plates to eat standing at the counter with a glass of white.

⏱ 1.5 hours
Order the Langres and pour a splash of marc de champagne into the dimple on top — that hollow exists precisely for it.

Signature Dishes & Restaurants

10:00
🍰 Waïda

Salon de thé on Place Drouet d'Erlon since 1930, behind curved wood panelling and a mirrored back wall. Biscuits roses made to the old double-bake method, pain d'épices de Reims, champagne macarons and classic mille-feuille.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 €8-12 for coffee and a pastry
Take the biscuit rose with a coffee rather than tea — the carmine-coloured sponge is engineered to be dunked without collapsing.
13:00
Racine

Kazuyuki Tanaka's Michelin-starred room on Place Godinot runs Japanese technique through Champagne produce: dashi broths, Marne pike, Ardennes game, fermented vegetables. Around 20 covers in a pared-back grey dining room.

⏱ 1 hour
15:00
🥂 Café du Palais

Run by the Vogt family since 1930, under a stained-glass ceiling with walls stacked in theatre posters and bric-a-brac, two minutes from the cathedral. Grower champagnes by the glass plus terrines and croque au jambon de Reims.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Champagne by the glass €9-18
18:00
🍾 Le Parc Les Crayères

Philippe Mille's two-star dining room inside the Pommery family's 1904 château, in a seven-hectare park south of the centre. The cellar lists well over 1,000 champagne references; menus lean on Marne fish, snails and Ardennes game.

If the tasting menu is out of range, the estate's Le Jardin brasserie in the same grounds does a three-course lunch for a fraction of the price with the identical park view.

Street Food, Bars & Food Culture

09:30
🍪 Maison Fossier

The last maker of the biscuit rose de Reims, baking since 1756 — twice-cooked, dyed with carmine, originally created to use the residual heat of bread ovens. The Cours Langlet boutique sells tins, croquignoles and massepains.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Tins from €6; large gift boxes €15-25
The Rue Maurice Prévoteau factory shop on the city's south side sells seconds and broken biscuits by weight at roughly half the boutique price.
12:30
🦪 Le Bocal

A dozen seats squeezed behind a working fishmonger on Rue de Mars, serving only what arrived that morning: oysters, langoustines, whole turbot, scallops in season. Chalkboard menu, no fixed carte, book ahead for lunch.

⏱ 1.5 hours
14:30
🍷 Le Wine Bar by Le Vintage

Cellar bar on Place du Forum pouring a rotating list of champagnes by the glass, weighted towards small growers from the Montagne de Reims villages — Verzenay, Bouzy, Ambonnay — alongside charcuterie and cheese boards.

⏱ 2 hours 💶 Glasses €8-18, boards €14-22
17:30
🍺 Glue Pot & Place Drouet d'Erlon terraces

Reims' oldest bar, opened 1922 at the top of the pedestrian square and still panelled in dark wood, pulling beer until late. From here the terraces run the full 500 m length of Drouet d'Erlon down to the fountain.

Order a ratafia de Champagne as a digestif — unfermented grape juice fortified with marc, drunk cold and rarely found outside the region.

📍 Route map

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