Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [92]
By the Marché d’Aligre
Opera fans thrill to visits backstage at Carlos Ott’s Opéra Bastille. The workrooms and full-scale rehearsal studios kindle lyric fascination. (120 rue de Lyon / +33 01 40 01 19 70.)
The Marché d’Aligre is the only Paris market open six days a week. It includes a street market, a covered market, and a flea market. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Place d’Aligre.)
Le Square Trousseau is headquarters for many of the Bastille area’s trendies. The food runs from comfort (terrines and tarts) to winds-of-change world food (risotto, chicken b’stilla). (1 rue Antoine-Vollon / +33 01 43 43 06 00.)
Sunday mornings are the choicest time at the wine bar Le Baron Rouge. Where else can you eat Arcachon oysters off the hood of a parked car while tasting Cairanne from Richaud? (1 rue Théophile-Roussel / +33 01 43 43 14 32.)
After a hard morning’s trade, shoppers and merchants collapse at La Table d’Aligre to savor sophisticated country cooking. (Place d’Aligre / +33 01 43 07 84 88.)
Whether you need a plum-colored sou’wester or a sequined pink beret, La Sartan is the Mad Hatter’s Parisian outpost. (24 rue de Charenton / +33 01 53 33 09 09.)
Michel Moisan has made his name as an organic baker; his walnut-hazelnut bread brings many across town. (5 place d’Aligre / +33 01 43 45 46 60.)
Spices and oils scent the entire Marché Beauvau thanks to Sur les Quais, which stocks at least a dozen vintages of olive oil—from Marché Beauvau, Sicily, Andalusia, and the Peloponnese. (place d’Aligre / +33 01 43 43 21 09.)
À la Providence is the place to buy French-style furniture hardware. (151 rue du Faubourg St.-Antoine / +33 01 43 43 06 41.)
Unlike some cutting-edge designers, Nathalie Dumeix creates for the less-than-anorexic. Zip into a vampy, bias-cut crêpe dress. (10 rue Théophile-Roussel / +33 01 43 46 00 22.)
Rue du Cherche-Midi
Lionized by Second Empire hostesses for his flattering portraits, Ernest Hébert would largely be forgotten today but for the handsome eighteenth-century Petit Hôtel de Montmorency-Bours, which houses the Musée Hébert, dedicated to his works. (85 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 42 22 23 82.)
The lunchtime crush at L’Épi Dupin is real, but so is the lunch, rich with chef François Pasteau’s inventions. Try the lamb enveloped in thin slices of eggplant. (11 rue Dupin / +33 01 42 22 64 56.)
Cuisine de Bar makes open-faced sandwiches of foie gras and shrimp on Poilâne’s famed sourdough, to be washed down with a fruit-juice cocktail. (8 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 45 48 45 69.)
Finely finished leather handles top the bright microfiber handbags at Ginkgo. Some even sport fur collars. (4 ter rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 45 44 90 87.)
Feelgood lives up to its name, selling flirty dresses and good-value bodysuits, made of low-shine microfiber, that sculpt the shape. All emerge from suitcases looking as well rested as the wearers would like to be. (9 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 45 44 88 66.)
At Elena Cantacuzène, ethnic styling meets catwalk chic. A handful of her beady “jools” are available in special American stores, but here you select from the full range. (47 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 45 44 95 94.)
Under the gaze of passersby, Pierre Marsaleix binds books. He’s pleased to fill special orders based on sketches, and stamps volumes in elaborate designs. (113–115 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 42 22 12 13.)
Célimène Pompon deals in what the French quaintly call travaux de dames, or needlework. Among the handsome original cross-stitch canvases, you’ll also find beguiling stuffed animals. (41 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 45 44 53 95.)
Taken with sleek Normandie-inspired furnishings? Hugues Chevalier displays a tempting array. (17 rue du Cherche-Midi / +33 01 45 48 69 55.)
RECOMMENDED READING
A Corner in the Marais: Memoir of a Paris Neighborhood, Alex Karmel (Godine, 1998). At the center of Karmel’s memoir is a specific building in the Marais, a building that “has no special distinction apart from the fact that it has been standing for centuries”—and that he and