Paris is home to over 80 weekly markets, where you can buy produce, cheese, meat, fish… pretty much everything you need. But one of my favorite Paris markets isn’t a weekly market, and it actually isn’t even in Paris.
These photos come from the rue du Point du Jour in Boulogne-Billancourt, which is just over the périphérique and still on the Parisian metro line 10 and 9. It’s a street filled with food shops, from a butcher to a primeur (fruit and veg), to one of my favorite Parisian cheese shops.
The street’s merchants are opened most days, except for Sundays (and some Mondays), and while some of the shops shutter between noon and 2pm, they do reopen in the afternoon, unlike the weekly markets.
Here are some tasty gariguette strawberries from this spring. Gariguettes are elongated and have a tart sort of sweetness that distinguishes them from the rounder mara des bois. They’re my personal favorite.
This is a bit more seasonal: green and purple grapes (we actually say white and black grapes in French). I loved the display, hanging the bunches on an actual grapevine.
In French, pomegranates bear the same name as grenades. They’re one of my favorite additions to fall salads, like this Brussels sprout salad with fried goat cheese and shallot vinaigrette.
On my food tours of Paris, I always stop by the fishmonger for these – bulots. These sea snails — known as whelks in English — are almost always sold cooked at fishmongers.
Each shop has its own recipe — some simmer them simply in seawater, while others season them with spices. At my favorite spots, I can ask for a toothpick and sample them at their freshest, right off the ice.