Some New and Old Favourites in Paris

Food shopping picks for chocolates, ice cream, cookies, pastries and more...

I wanted to begin by explaining the partial email some of you are receiving today. Because this is the first day posts are splitting into those for paid and free subscribers, I decided to include the option to send a preview of paid content to free subscribers. I won’t do it all the time (because that would be obnoxious!) but I want to give people an idea of the kind of posts they might be missing out on. Also, as I myself am a free subscriber to a few Substack accounts I fully understand if you aren’t interested in a paid subscription, so feel free ignore any of these previews. And if you DO want to upgrade, there’s no time like the present!

Now let’s go to Paris!

Top left, clockwise, Stohrer tarts, Yann Couvreur Paris-Brest, Jacques Genin St-Honoré, Christophe Michalak chocolate and praline tart,

My sister has lived in Paris for close to thirty years so I visit her family often. Yet it has been two years and one month since I last set foot in France, let alone an airplane. This week I’m here for a family celebration but of course I had to fit in some Parisian food visits. I’m less of a fanatic about seeing everything that’s new and hot than I was 10 years ago, but I still like checking out the scene. I’ve been doing this for so long with my sister that I can remember when Ladurée had but one shop on the Rue Royale and Pierre Hermé was still reinventing the mousse cake at Fauchon. A visit to Fauchon at the Place de la Madeleine was always on the agenda, as well as Hédiard to buy the best pâtes de fruits and rare wines. Alas, these two icons of French gastronomy are no longer.