The Wonderful World of French Food Shopping

Purchasing power. A recent study reported that it’s the number one concern among French consumers. My students frequently alternate between grumbling and fretting over it. Even advertisers have taken note, as a recent LastMinute.com billboard in the Métro boasted you could provide your family with a vacance “bling-bling” while still protecting your pouvoir d’achat.

The issue is most deeply felt in the area of food prices, a global crisis that shows no sign of letting up. Yet while the French population worries about the soaring cost of a kilo of apples, it also wants desperately to hold onto one of the oldest and dearest of French values—product quality. France has a long, long tradition of farming and people take the terroir very seriously. Each region is known for its agricultural specialties, and only the best producers boast the appellation d’origine contrôlée (or AOC) seal of approval, a government certification that the products (such as wine, dairy goods, produce) are indeed grown or made in said region. It’s a stamp of authority that the California avocado farmers could only dream of, and that New York apple-growers should seriously pursue for Macintoshes. (The fact that I think these are the best apples in the world is probably proof that I’ll always be a New Yorker at heart).

This meticulous attention to quality is reflected in the way one can shop for food. The French government has (of course) generated some laws that protect smaller businesses, limit competition, and therefore prevent prices from dropping. But is this completely a bad thing? Let’s take a deeper look in the shopping cart.

In France, you can shop at a large, chain supermarket. There you can find a wide variety of products, but not necessarily at reduced prices. Due to some bizarre law, chain markets are able to charge different prices for the same products depending where the store is located. Therefore, the same box of cereal can cost two euros more at a Monoprix in the tony 16th arrondisement than in the grittier, bohemian Belleville district. The supermarket offers the convenience of one-stop shopping, but depending on where you live, doesn’t necessarily offer savings.

You can turn to the hypermarkets if you want to shave off pennies, but those are few and far between. France has tried to restrict expansion as much as possible in order to protect small, independent businesses and avoid going the way of fiercely competitive capitalist markets. There are indeed zoning laws that prohibit more than one hypermarket within a wide geographic area, and even more laws that prevent more than one large supermarket from opening within a certain range.

This may seem strange to American consumers, yet there’s something to it. First of all, you may be able to pick up much-needed non-perishable items and household products at a supermarket or hypermarket, but the perishables aren’t necessarily of the highest quality. Second of all, there’s something sterile and uninviting about strolling the fluorescent-lit aisles of a grocery store, where employees are impassive and don’t know a whole lot about the products they’re peddling.

A much richer experience awaits shoppers in the small commercial areas of their quartiers,, a tradition that has been rendered extinct in the strip-mall-thatched expanses of America. Picking up groceries can sometimes be a chore, but I often look forward to it in my neighborhood. First, I stop at the small open-air marché where I select from a gorgeous display of produce—and most of it isn’t imported. Plus, it’s better than anything I’ve ever found in the States, even at Whole Foods (maybe just with the exception of my all-time favorite, California heirloom tomatoes). I regularly eat fruit from the market that really epitomizes the way fruits should taste. When’s the last time I savored berries or peaches of that quality back in the States? Too often in the U.S. you get produce that looks fantastic, only to have a mealy or diluted, watery taste. What also makes my shopping experience at my local petit marché so pleasant is the friendly greengrocer and his son who greet me with smiles and small talk every time.

On special occasions, I can also hit up the large outdoor markets, which tend to have lots more selection at slightly lower prices and aren’t nearly as bobo as U.S. farmer’s markets. However, I have to be lucky enough to have time in my schedule to visit these markets, as they’re often on weekday mornings and severely crowded on weekends.

Next, I’m off to the butcher. This is a relatively new experience for me, as I never shopped at a butcher in San Francisco. The miracle that is Trader Joe’s offered high-quality free range, organic poultry and meat at reasonable prices and so I usually bought my proteins there. At first, I bought meat at the supermarkets, but a recent scare (it came to light that at cheaper groceries they were repackaging nearly-expired meats to look fresher and giving them new expiration dates) made me a bit paranoid. So, I conceded to pay a bit extra to ensure that I was getting safe, quality meat. I couldn’t be more satisfied. The meat not only tastes fantastic, but there’s always such a huge variety of cuts to choose from. I still don’t dare venture into offal territory, but I could if I wanted to—it’s all proudly laid out in the display case. My butchers happily offer to butterfly chicken filets and pound them into thin breasts, cut up beef into cubes for a stew, or explain the best method for cooking certain cuts of lamb. The purveyors are also extremely smiley and gregarious, a quality which many French shopkeepers seem to lack.

Finally, I stop at the bakery. It goes without saying that French bakeries are proof of the divine. How else could something smell and taste so good? American bread—even when baked fresh on the premises with lots of love and care—doesn’t even come close. Not only is it a simple pleasure to pick up a fresh tradition or pain cereals, but it’s also (by French standards) cheap! Amen to that. There are tons of tiny boulangeries scattered throughout the city, with no zoning laws to restrict the reach of their delicious output.

While those are my top three food-shopping spots, I have many more artisinal, specialty shops to choose from: the fishmonger, the wine shop, the charcuterie (French equivalent of deli), the dedicated poultry vendor (complete with the always-spinning rotisserie), the chocolatier, and the cheese shop. At the latter, you can spend as much time as you want asking the shopkeepers about their endless varieties of fromage and they will never bat an eyelash. (This is in ironic contrast to the surly service we—and everyone else, for that matter—always received at Say Cheese on San Francisco’s Cole Street. It seems the shopkeepers there have swapped typical cultural roles with the upbeat cheesemongers on our current shopping street.)

Although I pay a bit extra for the privilege of filling my fridge with the bounty of the small, independently-run shops, it’s only marginally more than what I’d pay at the supermarket—and the quality is far better, from the perspective of what goes on my plate and my overall shopping experience. I’m with the French government on this one.