Paris … Markets
  • 10
  • Feb
  • 2013

Published in Condé Nast traveller Insider Europe January 2013 by Natasha Edwards :

Wherever you are in Paris, there’s a food market nearby: the city has more than 90 of them, each with its own character and style. At weekends, even in snooty quartiers such as Auteuil and Trocadéro, Parisians grab their baskets and head to the market. It’s a social occasion and a comfirmation of how important food is to French culture. Most marchés are outdoors, and held two or three mornings a week; on some streets they are open all day, usually with a long lunch break.

Here are four of the best :

In western Paris, Marché Président Wilson (Wednesday and Saturday mornings) occupies much of the central promenade on the av. of the same name, with the Musée d’Art Moderne on one side and the gardens of Musée Galliera on the other.  Like the area, it’s upmarket and its undoubted star is Joël Thiébault, whose vast stall is piled high with giant lettuces, huge bundles of carrots, beetroot and herbs. He supplies many of the city’s leading chefs with produce grown at Carrières-sur-Seine, just 15 km from Paris. As well as cultivating rare French varieties of vegetables, notably carrots, he has now branched out into mibuna, shungiku and all sorts of other mysterious Asian leaves.

The young bobo families of Batignolles district flock to the Marché Biologiques des Batignolles (saturday 9am-3pm), an organic market on Boulevard des Batignolles. It is wholesome, earthy, even educational: there is a pen of geese and farmyard animals that draws a crowd of small children. The stalls are great for vegetables, homemade jams, organic fish and meat, and goat’s cheese that look as though they have come straight from the farm.

Under the trees of Place Monge in the Latin Quarter is a compact and select market, most unlike the touristy one on nearby rue Mouffetard. For locals, the big attraction of the Marché Monge (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday mornings) is its many food producers’ stalls. There’s a specialist in Alpine cheeses and mountain hams, and a charcutier whose huge selection usually includes a steaming vat of choucroute. This is also a good market for locavores thanks to several organic market gardeners from the Ile de France and a supplier of wonderful apples from Picardy.

Near Bastille on rue d’Aligre, the Marché Beauvau is famous across Paris for its low prices and the banter of its stallholders. Next door, the covered market has good butchers, an Italian deli, and a stall with a couple of tables serving Corsican produce. There’s also a small, outdoor fleamarket on Place d’Alligre, the only one in central Paris.

(Near the Romantic Paris Apartement, Friday evening you can shop at a small organic market at Place Anvers. You can find a nice goat’s cheese stall, some butchers, a fish stall and a lot of vegetable stalls )

Charming picnic places
  • 21
  • Jul
  • 2012

At www.standaard.be I found some charming picnic places for the summerseason :

1/ LE MARCHE DES ENFANTS ROUGES AND SQUARE DU TEMPLE

One of the oldest markets of Paris gives you the opportunity to buy international food from over the world. When you found your taste, head for the charming Square du temple, where you’ll find nice spots to sit.

Le Marché des Enfants Rouges, 30, Rue de Bretagne, 75003 Paris

2/ ROSA BONHEUR AND BUTTES CHAUMONT

You can buy everything fresh : fruit, vegetables, bread, wine and have a seat on the stairs of Guingette Rosa Bonheur.

Rosa Bonheur, Parc des Buttes Chaumont, 75019 Paris

 

Marché de l’Olive
  • 25
  • Nov
  • 2010

Out of Vingtparismagazine
Text : Emily Sands-Bonin

Newly refurbished and opened in late September this year, the Marché de l’Olive has been hailed as very “Baltard” by Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris, an allusion to French 19th century architect Victor Baltard, designer of Les Halles, Paris’ mythical central market. But if Les Halles, destroyed in 1971, has given way to the Forum des Halles, a tacky shopping district located in the heart of Paris, overrun by tourists and nocturnal drug deals, the marché couvert La Chapelle, located far from the beaten path, is alive and well.

The marché couvert La Chapelle, commonly known as the “Marché de l’Olive,” is located in northeast Paris, where épiceries exotiques loaded with plantain bananas brush shoulders with colorful batik cottons, and where, the Mairie of Paris hastens to point out, the “last pockets of insalubrity are disappearing,” as the quartier slowly gentrifies.

The 18ème is vibrant and lively; one can be literally carried along by the late afternoon crowds and the scent of fried food, the stately 19th century Art Nouveau architecture sitting proudly above France’s postcolonial melting pot.
Situated on a little square off the main boulevard, Marx Dormoy, the market is surrounded by cafes and grocers. Through the automatic doors, stately wrought iron arches support a glass pavilion roof, flooding the space with natural light and rendering the piles of fruit and vegetables even more enticing. There were very few people in the market on a weekday afternoon, but the spacious corridors between the stalls can accommodate Saturday morning crowds with ease. Like the surrounding neighborhood, many of the commerçants are North African or Asian. The presence of a Moroccan traiteur with a steaming bowl of couscous reminds us, yet again, of France’s postcolonial plurality.

The Marché de l’Olive is definitely not for vegetarians, or for the faint of heart.  The meat is lustrously displayed; sausages and patés are abundant and the chickens still have plumed heads curling hooked black claws. I saw furry rabbits hanging above a butcher’s stand and, in the corner stand, above a selection of preserves, a stuffed fox looks on, posed next to what appears to be a stuffed crow, gripping a round box of camembert in his beak. The scene evokes the fable by La Fontaine, “The Fox and the Raven.” Flattered by the wily fox, the raven opens his beak to respond and drops his cheese, which the fox snatches up for lunch.

The Marché de l’Olive itself is similar to many a farmers’ market, but it is the newly renovated 19th century hall, as well as the bustling, multicultural quartier surrounding it, that make it part of the contemporary Parisian experience.

Marché de l’Olive – Marché couvert La Chapelle,10 Rue de l’olive, 75018 Paris , Tuesday – Saturday  8h30 -13h / 16h – 19h30, Sunday 8h30-13h, M° Marx Dormoy

Organic market on Sunday
  • 17
  • Sep
  • 2010

At Boulevard Raspail (6e arr.) they have a fresh market every Tuesday and Friday. But on Sunday the market transforms itself into the best organic market in Paris. In addition to poultry, cider, fruits, vegetables, charcuterie and cheese all labeled “natural” – this elegant market sometimes includes a truffle farmer who sells in the season a basketful of her wintertime harvest.

Boulevard Raspail, between rue du Cherche midi and rue de Rennes, 9 am to 2 pm