Le Chat Perché: The Gourmet Festival That Turns Dole Into a Food Village

Le Week-end Gourmand du Chat Perché — the extraordinary annual food festival that transforms the entire historic centre of Dole into a vast gourmet village every September — is one of the most celebrated and most distinctive food events in the whole of Bourgogne Franche-Comté. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Dole — the former capital of the Franche-Comté, a city of Renaissance architecture, canals and the birthplace of Louis Pasteur — and tells the full story of a festival named after the most beloved creation of the writer Marcel Aymé, who grew up in this city and whose perching cat has given Dole its identity as a city that takes imagination as seriously as gastronomy. Running every year in late September since 2014, drawing over 60,000 visitors across a single weekend, the Chat Perché brings together around 150 local producers and food artisans across fifteen temporary villages installed in the stone-paved streets and Renaissance squares of the old town — with tasting passes, bell tower experiences, Michelin-starred menus and a children's food trail all running simultaneously.

The episode covers the full story of the Chat Perché festival — the structure of the tasting pass that takes visitors through historic buildings including the Hôtel-Dieu and the cloître de la Visitation, the special menus du Chat Perché served by every restaurant in the city from Michelin-starred kitchens to small neighbourhood bistros, and the food culture of Dole and the Jura that the festival celebrates. Comté from the Jura — whose different terroirs, maturations and producers all appear at the festival. Cancoillotte — the semi-liquid unpasteurised cheese of Franche-Comté, two thousand years old and now IGP protected. Morteau and Montbéliard sausages. Morel mushrooms from the Jura forests. Vin jaune — the extraordinary yellow wine aged under a film of yeast for a minimum of six years and three months — and the full range of Jura whites and reds that make this one of the most distinctive wine regions in France.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The Chat Perché episode connects to the Comté and French cheese episodes in the main Fabulously Delicious catalogue — and to the pôchouse episode from Chalon-sur-Saône earlier in the series, as both sit in the same broad Burgundy and Franche-Comté food culture that defines this stretch of the Tour route. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

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