This is a continuation of my Paris posts on our recent trip at the end of May]
There is a puzzle by Galison (Galison is my preferred puzzle maker) that I looked at last Winter. Making puzzles is a good indoor activity for dark days and cold nights. The puzzle features a row of shops along a typical French street, with apartments above. At the time I did not think I was heading to Paris anytime soon, if ever.
I thought about the puzzle after my trip, whilst looking at some of the photos of shop fronts which I noticed on our walks around Paris. You will be able to find such stores across all of Paris’s 20 arrondissements.
The French word for window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrines, literally to ‘do window licking’. This might seem a gross notion but not for me, as most of the windows I stopped at featured bread, cakes and pastries. A less patient man than Mr Gochugaru might have walked in the opposite direction but with good grace he paused, all the time listening to my critique of the goods on offer. Once in a while I would walk into a shop to purchase an item which we would share.
The thing is, in order to eat all the varieties of sweet and savoury foods which abound we would have to live in Paris for a very long time. I read that as most Parisians live in very small apartments, they necessarily have to purchase their groceries daily. This is good idea even if you have a larger living space, and something I should aim to do more. It’s hard to get away from the Chinese mentality of having extra food items stashed away in the house, as we should always ready for friends and family to drop by at short notice. It would be a severe loss of face if we could not rustle up a meal in half an hour. Perhaps this never happens in Paris as you would just walk downstairs to your local delicatessen etc and purchase what you would need to host your guests.
My parents fell in love with the humble rotisserie chicken on their first trip to Paris: perhaps this is what they would have bought to entertain their guests had they lived there
Whilst we found food shops in every area we walked, the treasure box area was around the Marché couvert des Enfants Rouges (39 rue de Bretagne, 75003 Paris). If you like food, a slow-paced wander along the streets here will make you feel it is your birthday and Chinese New Year/ Christmas/ Hanukah (you get the idea) rolled into one. I have even had the thought, since returning to London, that I should maybe go to Paris for a Saturday day trip and eat my round the shops here.
A selection of savoury foods and breads
A selection of sweet treats
We shared a chausson aux pommes (apple turnover) from Boulangerie Poilâne (38 Rue Debelleyme, 75003 Paris)
It is quite hard to get a bad croissant in Paris and I hope you never suffer a lacklustre one
As you can imagine the pictures here represent perhaps 0.1 % of what is available in Paris. I did not manage to step into any cheese, chocolate and other types of sweet shops (take a look at one here). I feel I have only scratched the surface of good things to eat in Paris.
A word about Boulangerie Poilâne:
I first read of Lionel Poilâne and the family boulangerie in a newspaper article that said its renowned sourdough boule would be sold for the first time in London through Fortnum and Mason. Since each loaf of the sourdough weighed nearly 2 kilos, it would be portioned into quarters for sale. I went to Fortnums and duly bought a quarter loaf, which was of course very expensive compared to any other bread I had bought before. Being a very young mother then I cannot clearly remember the details, but would like to think that I fed the little infants a hunk of this bread.
In the intervening years two things happened which I still remember. In June 2000 Boulangerie Poilâne opened a branch here in London (46 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9PA). Then on October 31 2002 Lionel Poilâne and his wife perished in a helicopter crash, leaving behind their two daughters. The story about Apollonia taking over her father’s bakery business is well documented and I admire her very much for taking on the challenge.
The Book:
Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery by Apollonia Poilâne, published by Harvest, ISBN 978-1328810786. If I finish tidying up my bookshelf I will get a copy by way of a reward to myself.
In the next post I will share some thoughts and photos of non-food shopping in Paris.