Food Markets in Paris You Cannot Miss

Paris has been the City of Light since it was ruled by the Sun King, and the City of Love since it was redesigned by Haussmann, but for me it will always be the City of Food. Every one of my favorite Paris memories involve food. I love all the brilliant, modest little restaurants that hide in every arrondissement. I love that some, like “À La Petite Chaise”, have been there since the French Revolution, and that others, like “Le Clown Bar”, feature foreign takes on the classics of French cooking. I also love the huge, ornate dining rooms of the very apex of French cuisine: looking out over the Seine to the Louvre from “Guy Savoy'' while eating truffle and artichoke soup is hard to top. I love all the small chocolatiers (my current favorite is “Jade Genin”, but her father still has the best pâtes de fruits at “Jacques Genin”), and the magic that is a true Parisian Macaron (the most famous is “Pierre Hermé”, but I will take “Maison Pralus” every time).

All of these little wonders make any visit to Paris magical, but for me, nothing compares to the pure joy of the Parisian food markets. My first time in Paris was in my second year of university and I was lucky enough to stay with a friend who grew up in the city. He lived with his parents near Père-Lachaise. They were out of town, and he knew I loved to cook, so we got up early after my first, very late night in the city, and took the subway to the Arts et Metiers station, where we walked past the Elie Weisel botanical park and into the oldest food market in Paris: Le Marché des Enfants Rouges. I remember almost nothing from the rest of that first trip, but I remember everything about the market. We arrived just after they opened at 8:30 in the morning, and a few of the vendors were still setting up, but already we were hit with a symphony of aromas. From the floral, yeasty fragrance of brioche and baguettes to the rich spice of shawarma and basterma, every corner of the covered market had its own incredible smell, and I wanted to walk the whole length of it just to be intoxicated by the varied bouquets.

To walk through Le Marché des Enfants Rouges is to be struck with endless possibilities. Mountains of perfect fresh fruit, ready to be mixed with fromage blanc. Lavender from Provence waiting to be stuffed into the fresh duck brought in that morning from Pays de la Loire. Every shade and size of heirloom tomato ready to be slow cooked with wine and the saffron you can smell at the Middle Eastern stall around the corner. You could serve that with the just caught mussels or the scallops in the shell that are only a few stalls over. Great fruit and vegetables, great butchers, and fresh seafood are all well and good, but you really know you are in Paris when you get to the meat and cheese.

The first thing you’ll see when you visit a charcutier will be the hanging meats. Saucisson sec, saucisse de Toulouse, saucisse de canard, jambon de Paris, jambon de Bayonne, chipolata: all hanging and drying in the morning air, and behind them in low fridges filled to the brim: rillette de canard, fromage de tête, pâté de champagne, foie gras torchon, pâté en croûte, and a whole library of terrines. I knew almost none of these then of course, but everything looked so delicious and so very very French. I knew that I wanted my breakfast to be nothing but a baguette, some sort of charcuterie, and perhaps the most important part of any French market: the cheese.

Fromageries will always be associated with France, and Paris has the best of the best. There are many throughout every market in the city, but one of my favorites, “Fromagerie Jouannault", is just a few steps outside the Marché des Enfants Rouges. It is a Affineur, which means they also age the cheese in house, not only sell it, and it is staffed with incredibly knowledgeable (and multilingual) staff that will be happy to help you choose between Neufchatel and Delice de Bourgogne, between Valençay and Pouligny-Saint-Pierre. These are the foundations of a true Parisian breakfast.

While Le Marché des Enfants Rouges was the first, and my first, Paris Market, subsequent explorations of Paris led me to so many other wondrous spots in the city. And I feel these are the ones you cannot miss:

If you’d like to travel back in time, nothing beats the oldest street in Paris: Rue Mouffetard. This lively route through the Latin Quarter was the inspiration for Hugo’s Les Miserables and the street that Ernest Hemmingway called “that wonderful narrow crowded market street”, and it is both a market, Marché Mouffetard, and a whole market street, filled with beautiful pâtisseries, fromageries, butchers and bakeries alongside fantastic architecture, often dating to the middle ages.

For my top must-visit market for the passionate and informed cook, I would probably pick Marché Raspail, on the beautiful and chic Boulevard Raspail in the 6th Arrondissement. Open Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, it is the largest all-organic market in all of France, and is known for the impeccable quality of its produce. While it is easy to get overwhelmed here by the sheer volume and excellence of produce, be sure not to miss the galette and crepe stand at the end of the market, which is worth the trip alone.

The Marché Bastille, running along Boulevard Richard-Lenoir North from the Bastille itself, is one of the biggest farmers markets in Paris, with more than 100 stalls of fresh produce. Open on Thursdays and Sundays, it really shines on the Sunday where it also hosts a small antiques and artisanal crafts market that seems filled with ten thousand little tchotchkes and nicknacks that you couldn’t live without, alongside beautiful handmade plates and carving boards.

Finally, I could never leave you without telling you about the market I visit most when I go to Paris these days: the Marché d Aligre. The most affordable and most multicultural of the Parisian markets, it is perhaps the one that feels the most like a working person’s market, with coffee stalls, a little flea market, a huge variety of fresh herbs, endless rows of olives, a wide range of fromageries and some excellent fish mongers. It is a beautiful place, always bustling, and a reminder that these markets are fantastic spots to visit, but they are also the daily shopping routines for many Parisians. It’s a reminder that always makes me think of moving to what, for me, will always be the City of Food.