Food shopping - First Impressions

We don't have a car right now, so local shopping is really important to us, and of course more fun!

Fortunately there is a Casino supermarket in the neighborhood, just 5 minutes away. It’s relatively small but a joy to visit, and simply wander the aisles in slow pleasure, absorbing the sights and smells.

It's Sunday morning - and we’re astounded to see long lines at the checkout and no carts (chariots) to hand because the store is packed. The locals are out in force - many buying the week's shopping, but others clearly shopping for fresh food for their big Sunday get together.

We wait for a cart and remember we must have a 1 euro piece handy to be able to disengage it from the lines of carts usually chained together outside the store. Our euro is only borrowed – it is appreciatively returned once we restore the cart to its rightful resting place with the others.

On entering, the delicious smell of baking bread immediately strikes us. In fact bread is continuously baked throughout the day here and so is often delightfully hot to the touch. The French have improved their bread habits since we were here over 20 years ago – now, in addition to the traditional white flour baguette and pain, there is a wide selection of whole grain breads and rolls (petits pains). We have fallen in love with the baguette aux céréales. Prices are generally very comparable with the USA, and local tax is already included of course, so what you see is what you pay. A healthy baguette aux céréales is 0,95€ (about $1.33 including tax), a regular baguette 0,63€ (no longer government price controlled but closely monitored by consumer associations).

By the way, for those who haven’t encountered numbers here, the decimal point in France is replaced by a decimal comma, conversely the thousands separator is a comma, not a period. It’s quite a challenge writing a check because the value in words is written first, then the payee’s name (the opposite of English or American checks), followed by the numerical value with periods and commas reversed!

After the bread comes the fresh fruit and vegetable area with a few products we don’t recognize but look interesting for another day. We quickly learn that you must place produce in a plastic bag, put it on nearby scales, search through a list to find what you have chosen, then press its icon to get it weighed, priced and a label printed that you place on the bag.

Next we arrive at the patisserie with those amazingly beautiful gateaux and desserts that are veritable works of art – hand-made, transient and pleasurable of course. We are spoilt – nous sommes gâtés!

The patisserie counter forms a square with the delicatessen on the opposite side. By way of contrast, here are displayed all the savory delights – a cornucopia of cheeses, pâtés, often encased in golden pastry (en croûte), sausages, including several boudin (made with blood), and andouillette (made with intestines). Oh, and some large bowls of snails (escargots), suitably stuffed with garlic ready for the oven.

This brings us to the meat counter where, even in this small store, we come across traditional French items such as rabbit (lapin) beautifully dressed, lambs feet (pieds d’agneau ), lambs tongue (langue d’agneau), veal brains (cervelle de veau), horse steak (steak à cheval), and a local specialty - Marseille pieds et paquets (offal of tripe and feet) - un mets composé d'abats de mouton (tripes et pieds). More pictures available for those interested!

Being so close to the Mediterranean, the fish counter offers a wide variety of fresh fish and shellfish that monsieur le poissonnier will prepare on request. Trying to understand the French names though can be quite a challenge since many of the Mediterranean varieties are simply not seen elsewhere and so are not readily translatable. Even for the French, there is a pictorial wall chart!

Near the end of this delightful excursion we arrive at the wine section where Val is spoilt for choice by two floor-to-ceiling shelves of dry rosé wine, starting at around 2€ a bottle.  No white Zinfandel here...

Another small advance in technology by the way - prices on shelves are displayed using small LCDs, indicating price and unit price (per kilo or per litre for example), making comparison shopping much easier, and of course allowing the store to change prices easily without any need to reprint shelf labels.

Now to pay… there are 4 self-checkouts but they take European cards only - those with a chip on board, so we have to go through the regular checkouts with our old-fashioned 1950s technology magnetic-stripe credit cards. But this is in fact a pleasure as we get to talk to local people in the queue, and we are starting to get known by the regular cashiers who have to get a signature when we pay with our funny foreign credit card.

We only buy as much as we can comfortably carry back to the apartment, even if it is only a few minutes away. If we spend 50€ or more they will deliver - but then we’d be tied to staying at home when they call by, and besides we don’t have a lot of storage in our small apartment.

Most importantly though, we simply enjoy going back every couple of days and buying our fresh bread, cheese and wine… and meeting people along the way.

© 2011 text and images Trevor and Valerie White