Cholet eats the hearty western Loire kitchen — pork rillettes, white mogette beans, fouée bread, and freshwater fish from the upper Sevre. The local Anjou wines, both still and the slightly fizzy fines-bulles, are everywhere and cheap. Pricing is firmly provincial: a serious lunch menu for around twenty euros, dinner thirty to forty.
The covered market hall in the centre runs three days a week and is the obvious place to assemble a picnic — local cheeses, charcuterie, rotisserie chicken and the regional brioche-style breads.