Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [256]
France Magazine
There are very few pieces of mail that arrive in my mailbox that I am genuinely excited about, but France Magazine is one of them. This wonderful, fully illustrated quarterly—filled with a heady mix of articles covering culture, travel, timely topics, and cuisine—began publication more than twenty years ago. Under the direction of editor Karen Taylor, the magazine is published by the French-American Cultural Foundation (FACF) in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to foster cultural and educational ties between France and North America. Previously available only by subscription, France is now for sale at select Barnes & Noble, Borders, and smaller bookstores nationwide, and I highly recommend becoming a regular reader (202 944 6069 / francemagazine.org).
Le Furet-Tanrade
I first learned of this shop from Patricia Wells in her first edition of The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris, and I’ve been a loyal customer of Le Furet-Tanrade ever since (63 rue de Chabrol, 10ème / lefuret-tanrade.com). Initially, I went to the store in search of confiture de poire passée, a smooth, delicious pear concoction Wells recommended for mixing with plain yogurt. I did as she prescribed, and I was rendered speechless by how delicious it was. Later, I discovered pêche de vigne jam, and all I have to say is if you think you’ve had better peach jam anywhere in the world than this one, you are dead wrong. Still later, I discovered the shop’s orange-flower water made from the blossoms at the orangerie at Versailles, and the chocolates, which are of quite good quality. Tanrade has, according to Naomi Barry in Paris Personal, “enjoyed the reputation of being the first house in Paris for fine jams, jellies, and fruit syrups” for nearly 250 years. At the time Barry penned her book (1963), she considered Tanrade’s marrons glacés the finest in Paris. I can’t vouch for that, but I can for every single item that I’ve purchased here. Tanrade is positively vaut le détour.
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Les Halles
In recent years, I’ve become incredibly fascinated by Les Halles, Paris’s central food marketplace until 1969. Though there was a market on the site since 1183, it is Victor Baltard’s iron and glass pavilions, constructed between 1854 and 1866, that captivate my imagination (ten original market halls were erected in the 1800s, with two reproductions added in 1936). Les Halles is pronounced lay-AHL, one of the few examples in French where liaison—the practice of pronouncing the final s in a word when the next word begins with a vowel—does not apply. (Other examples include les hors d’oeuvres, les haricots, les homards, and les hot-dogs.)
Les Halles, as Naomi Barry wrote in her 1963 Paris Personal, was “a kind of butter-and-egg Casbah, packed with history, glamour, traffic, trading, and vice.… To stroll through this brilliant, aromatic bazaar is to spin your senses until they reel with the colors and the smells of everything that grows on earth and comes up out of the sea.” There was a profusion of two-wheeled carts at the market known as diables, belonging to neighborhood grocery owners who needed fresh produce for their shops. There were also porters, known as les forts des Halles, who had had their own guild since 1140. Les forts also served as pallbearers to the kings, who, upon their deaths, were carried to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, just outside of Paris, where French monarchs have traditionally been buried. In 1461 les forts went on one of the most successful strikes in French history: halfway to Saint-Denis, they set down the casket of Charles VII and refused to go any farther until they were promised more money. Lastly, Barry tells us that the word clochards (bums) may derive from Les Halles: a bell (cloche) would be rung after the day