Mon petit sac vert

The little green bag does Paris

My little green bag is my best travelling companion. It understands me, and my needs.

Isn’t this the most adorable map of Paris? But then, Paris is pretty adorable full stop. Especially now, for me, especially after two years of pandemic and not leaving Waterlooville. Here is where I am staying: near the Champagne bottle top right.

My last restaurant meal before the lockdown was in Rome, Italy, March 2020. This is my first restaurant meal since then. Its Sichuan. Its fabulous. And its Chez Janny 22 boul St Germaine, Paris. They have Vietnamese too, but go with the Sichuan menu. SPICY! delicious.

There were leftovers.

Leftovers all wrapped up and toted home in mon sac vert.

And here they are all unpacked. Just. So. Good. I am eating them for dinner, right this moment, in case you can hear any happy moaning in the background….

I am here in Paris for the Gourmand Cookbook Fair and World Cuisines Week. Last time the bookfair was in Paris, I was travelling and helping out my late friend, Josephine Bacon, who had a booth in the publishers part of the fair. During the day, I helped her our though mainly just talked and talked and talked with people, and in the evenings after the fair, we scoured the city for places to eat.

Michelin be damned, we were up for adventure: funky, down to earth, from the heart, food experience adventures. We ate piles of sauerkraut and sausages near the gare de l'est--an area traditional for choucroute and beer, once upon a time having arrived at the gare de l'est by train. There was a bistro with oeufs en Meurette, eggs poached in a deep rich red wine sauce, and endless plates of cheese.

One evening we shopped at the Marche St Quentin for my cooking demonstration scheduled the next day. Marche St Quentin is an indoor, covered, market that I imagine is still close to what it was when it was first built: a beating heart of a food-obsessed city, a food-obsessed culture

Fruits and vegetables, fresh meats, seafood and fish, pristinely fresh from the sea; several booths selling cheeses (plus a cave for aging cheese), traditional regional French charcuterie, a cafe and wine bar, several bakers, and a handful of other countries' specialities: Portugal, Lebanon, Vietnam, Italy...Tunisia. An old fashioned kitchenware/hardware shop, and a second hand shop that for several years was my go-to palace for wonderful shoes. "Le Fooding" once celebrated "Soup Week" with famous chefs making a daily soup in the markets of Paris, as I discovered when I popped into the market and came face to face with acclaimed chef Yves Camemborde ladling out soup. It was pureed cod and potato soup, with a little chorizo melting in on top and it was, of course, marvellous.

I always felt that the Marche St Quentin should be the subject of a film, or at least the background of a French slice of life film, perhaps circa 1960s. Though I couldn't go back in time and do that, I invited Malaysia's Chef Wan to Marche St Quentin on a guided tour--by me--for his food and travel television series. The audience loved it.

Small family-run restaurants ring the edges of the market and its aisles; after buying the goosefat and eggs I needed for my cooking demonstration, I shleppe Josephine to th back of the market, to my fave little Moroccan place. Cheap, cramped but cheerful, with an array of delicious, fresh, daily dishes you just point to. I love their homemade harissa--so flavorful, not just spicy-hot--and always buy a few jars to bring home. We pointed, then sat and settled in, waiting for our dishes to arrive.

I'm not going to go on and on about how wonderful it was (you already know this). We ate, we were happy, and when it was time to leave, we bought various Moroccan sweet cakes to take away. And then we noticed that the lights of the market were dimming, and the little stands which were lively when we went to dinner, were now shut for the night, fruits and vegetables covered with cloths, shades dropped down with the word: "ferme".

Did I tell you that it is my dream to be locked in overnight, in a market of wonderful? It might be universal; it might be your dream too. Sudden joy flashed through my mind: was this going to be the moment I achieved my dream?

Dream is not reality, and reality kept creeping in. I had always imagined it would be wonderful, but in reality, where would we sleep? Where would we use a bathroom? We couldn't really eat from the vendors booths without paying and there was no way for us to pay. We scurried over to the huge front double-doors to make our way out. They were chained shut.

We went back to the Moroccan restaurant--maybe they could help? But in what seemed like only a few minutes, the restaurant was now dark and empty. No one in sight.

All over the building there were doors; so many exits. Calmly, we tried another one. It too was locked, shut with a huge chain weaving its way through the metal gates. We tried another door. The big chains and lock rattled as we shook the door trying to get attention. We were considerably less calm now.

My dream might have been coming true--being locked overnight in the most wonderful of food stores--but I was panicking. My anxiety was kicking in, and i was just on the edge of screaming, though of course we had already been screaming a bit, trying to get attention from anyone still in the building.

The huge room was, by now, dark. We crept carefully through the aisles, hoping to not knock anything over, damage anything (especially ourselves) There were a lot of doors to the market, I kept thinking, but each door we reached was locked shut with a massive chain. I began to give up hope. Here I was surrounded by the most luscious, exciting, wonderful foods of the world, and all i wanted was to get out of there, get out and go back to the hotel and to bed. Josephine was a lot cooler at coping than I was.

We shlepped one door to the next, each door locked firmly, until we saw in a distance the last door we hadn't tried. We ran towards it.

As we grasped the handle, a man on the other side was just beginning to lock it up, chain in hand, big lock in other hand. He looked at us slightly quizzically; opened the door and we burst out, nearly flying out the door and down the street; we just wanted to go go go. The guy calmly finished locking up. And that was that.

Fromage. Marche St Quentin has several really good fromagers; the first day here i bought this tiny little button of a baby Eppoises. It was lush and happy making so of course I went back for more. In fact, I am so happy with this fromager at the moment, plus it is right around the corner from where I am staying, that I think I will go every day and buy a little bit of a new cheese, a new taste.

For my next posting I’m going cheese-y. We’ll visit the fromager, taste, sniff, revel…stay with me, you’re coming along!