RUE CLER: A WORLD IN TWO BLOCKS
Paris
Nov 2008
The global economy may be in free–fall, but travelers still love Paris, and Paris gives a lot of love right back. But you may not find that love on the grand boulevards or in the great museums.
It lives on neighborhood streets just wide enough for one car, where mothers and nannies walk the little ones to and from school, where you shop for groceries with your own little cart and the corner cafe doubles as your living room.
We spent a week in one of these neighborhoods, the rue Cler in the 7th arrondissement, in what Europe travel guide extraordinaire Rick Steves calls “village Paris.”
To market, to market
Virtually each of Paris’ 20 arrondissements has its own market streets or outdoor markets. Rue Cler, in the 7th arr., probably is the best known.
Cars are banned, creating a two–block promenade for shoppers. Bakeries and butcher shops, greengrocers and fish markets, cafes, wine shops, banks, newsstands, a post office, even small two–star hotels, are all packed together.
Supermarkets like Franprix and LeaderPrice cover the basics. To avoid being instantly tagged as an American, don’t stand there at the checkstand, waiting for someone to bag your groceries. Over here, you buy it, you bag it.
Is it possible to get a bad wine in Paris? We haven’t yet, even buying the cheapest bottles we could find.
One place you won’t find a bad anything is L'Epicerie Fine Rive Gauche, on Champs du Mars. The owners are incredibly friendly. Even the other customers try to make you feel welcome!
We went there looking for perhaps the world’s most highly touted ice cream, Berthillon. We wanted to see if it lived up to the hype.
It does. No preservatives, no artificial anything, and flavors intense enough to straighten your spoon. Two servings of their rum–raisin may render you unfit to drive. One taste of their caramel and ginger will convince you that gingerbread can melt. And what they do with chocolate is simply not of this world.
One lady, seeing our purchase, shouted, “Berthillon, the best of France!” She’s right.
The greengrocers in these markets can ruin you for supermarket produce. Everything open and fresh, nothing entombed in plastic or artificially ripened. Great stuff. Almost makes you WANT to cook!
Then again, delicatessens like Davoli prepare such a range of incredible pre–cooked meats, poultry, fish and vegetables that you may not bother.
La Sablaise is the fish market where we got the scallops for our cooking class. Again, everything fresh, nothing frozen.
Need flowers for your table? Lost your wine bottle opener? The zipper on your suitcase broke? There’s a shop somewhere within walking distance that can take care of you.
In its genius for providing virtually everything needed for daily life, rue Cler reminds one of South Kensington in London, only in a much smaller space. And space is very much an issue here.
Paris is an extremely dense, compact city. You don’t see a private yard until you hit the suburbs. Even supermarkets here are closer in size to a 7–Eleven in the States.
Here, the family refrigerator fits under your kitchen counter. The stove has two burners, no more. And more often than not, the dishwasher is you.
A life lived small
Entertain at home? A family of leprechauns, perhaps. But they have to be quiet leprechauns. Parisians, once in their apartments, respect each other’s peace, and the paper–thin walls they share.
At the cafe, they can raise their glasses and their voices, laugh, argue, share stories. They can meet for a meal, a cafe creme, or sit in undisturbed solitude with a kir and a good book.
The most popular cafe here is Café du Marché, on the corner of rue Cler and Champs du Mars. If you go for lunch, go early, or you will find every table full, even the outdoor tables where the smokers sit.
Otherwise, grab a baguette sandwich from the bakery across the street and hold out until dinnertime. You’ll see plenty of people walking and munching on these at the same time.
The true stars of village Paris are the people — the baker who turns your pastry into a neatly boxed and bowed gift, the wine shop owner who finds you a great Beaujolais when your euros are running at low tide, the man who helps you pick oysters from Normandy, so fresh that you can still taste the sea in them.
The market becomes an extended family, one that readily adopts new members from anywhere. A simple bonjour, an au revoir and a smile will take you farther here than you ever thought you could go.
This is where Paris finds its soul — and where you, the visitor, find Paris.