The farms of Cantal have a proud history of quality.  Quality based on the richness of the land brought to fruition by traditional skills and savoir faire.  It is only natural, then, that Cantal gastronomy is built around the products of its own terroir. 

A land of rich simple food based on the best local ingredients.  A wide variety of locally cured and produced charcuterie: hams, fritons, pates, terrines and sausages.   Game from the hills and woodland with seasonal hare and rabbit, quail, venison and wild boar.  Rustic breads and pastries, nuts, oils, jams and honeys.   Famous Gentian liqueur, eaux de vie distilled from plums, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants and chestnuts.  True riches of the earth.

But above all, with its rich green pastures, Cantal is a land of cattle.  Notably, it is home to the magnificent red-brown Salers with their long, lyre-shaped horns whose ceremonial transhumance up to their mountain pastures signals the true start of the cantalian summer.  Scarcely surprising, then that Cantal is famous both for its beef, and its cow’s milk cheeses:  dense golden roundels of Cantal and Salers (its name proudly stamped into its surface), soft creamy St. Nectaire fermier, and the rich tangy blues, Fourme d’Ambert and Bleu d’Auvergne.   And let’s not forget mild Tome – key ingredient of truffade and aligot, those wonderfully rich and warming dishes that define this whole region.