Eat Like You Live in France
Where & how we buy things, how we build meals, and why the small adjustments matter more than recipes
We came to France thinking about food. A lot of people do, but France also offers a lot more than just French food, but you have to go looking a bit.
That took some time.
Across supermarkets, markets, random épiceries, and the occasional online order that arrives two weeks later, here is an incomplete list of how we shop here.
Bref:
But you can’t live like you’re on vacation forever, and the weekly market—no matter how charming—just doesn’t solve everything. Not unless someone’s selling artisanal kitty litter over by the oysters.
A mixed bag of shopping reviews, all-occasion recipes and some ideas of what to buy if you eat like us. Covers a lot of basics for the unfamiliar and, I hope, new stuff for folks who live here.
Pantry
We shop across multiple places, stockpile what’s hard to find, and once the pantry works, everything else does too.
Once the pantry is set up the way we like it, everything else gets easier—and better. The real shift isn’t just where we shop, it’s how we cook: simple meals built around grains, legumes, and vegetables, finished with small adjustments—acid, heat, herbs, butter—that make it all come together. Recipes, sources, and what actually works below.
Base
How we do most of our shopping.
Supermarkets. Every other week, we go to a big Carrefour, E.Leclerc, Super U or Intermarché. Every 8-10 weeks, or get a delivery of heavy items to the house: pantry items, cleaning supplies, (sometimes) yogurt, pasta, coffee, cat food, cat litter.
There is a LeClerc near us that is like a small city, hypermarche. Hypermarches are a minimum of 2500 sqm (27,000 square feet). You can rent cars and trucks, then possibly drive them around inside the store.
We don’t have a car. But we’re on the outskirts of a larger city and everyone will deliver to us,
And really, there is no glory in hauling kitty litter.
Basics
supermarket rankings
Carrefour has very good organic options for cheap, their Reflets de France stuff is consistently really excellent and a real bargain. 40% of our supermarket shopping.
E.Leclerc is cheap, but there are fewer of them. Come in with a list, try to stick with it. Good luck with that – we do big shops there and it is generally worth it, but it adds up. 10% of our shopping, but we like it.
We have a good Intermarche near us—the market is hit & miss in our experience, but can be surprisingly good for meat. JIC you don’t want to wait for the local guys on the weekend. 25% of our shopping, but just because it’s close.
Monoprix is great, but can get pricey. Great for textiles, curiously. 5% of our shopping, just when nearby.
Netto is a rare visit, but as it’s near an African market I like, I’ll stop in. Kemet Exotique is Senegalese, but cover many countries. Many times, an Asian market will include Caribbean and African products, along with Indian products as well. Much like other markets, they seem to broadly cover “non-french” cuisine. Less than 5% of our shopping.
Lidl is limited, but cheap for what they have. It’s hard to pass up some of the wine deals, but there are real issues. Less than 5% of our shopping.
Aldi I approach with caution, but dried goods and some other basics are good. You can get quality Tunisian harissa for under €1 a tube so I drop in if I’m near and see what else is there. I rarely go to Aldi and don’t love them. Less than 5%.
[Ed note: is the % thing even a good measure?]
Long Game
Around NYC, I’d go to the big supermarkets, occasionally to the charmless Costco, the wonderful H Mart, farmer’s markets where you drop $8 on a head of lettuce. and somehow spend $40 on a handful of vegetables and a loaf of bread.
Prices are broadly better here. The quality of food, even the junk, is still broadly better.
local flavors
But - I have had many bland pizzas, pastas, Indian food that tasted like ketchup, Mexican food that was both expensive and flavorless, the opposite of all of my experiences with Mexican food. France also offers a rainbow of bland flavors.
Supermarkets offer basic Asian ingredients that are both not so good and crazy expensive. You could easily think Old El Paso was, in fact, authentic Mexican food if you only went to French supermarkets.
This also happens in restaurants.
It’s hard to know if it’s the cooks or if they’re catering to the local tatstes, which my wife calls “English food with an accent.”
It’s not a compliment.
hoard
If you see something you like and it’s hard to locate, get at least 2. it may or may not be there the next time. I know many people who shop this way over here, especially for shelf-stable items.
We stockpile certain hot sauces and it’s pretty easy to get people to bring spice blends when they visit. One of my wife’s friends brought her over a restaurant-size bottle of her favorite hot sauce, Louisiana.
Yes, they do have a gallon size. I think you could do a wings night at a busy restaurant for a week with all of this. In France, for a month.
So we’re covered on that one for a while.
French basics
Dairy is incredible here. There is almost always a quality local option available, even in the major chains. Just look for it – Paysan Breton is great value and quality. Also, C’est qui le patron pays producers better and their milk is excellent. Even with normally flavorless shelf-stable milk, these brands have flavor.
They say “no French person buys their baguettes at the supermarket,” but they fly off the shelves at supermarkets near us and I can only assume it’s mostly French folks buying them.
Despite the charm of the local charm of French markets, I have never seen a supermarket empty.
LeClerc’s baguettes are the best supermarket option, IMO; Carrefour’s are acceptable (& I have become a bread snob). Aldi and Lidl’s bread options are suffering: various shapes of Wonderbread.
I’ll always go to a boulangerie, if possible – and often do a few times a week. Maybe 1 in 20 baguettes I buy comes from a supermarket, but it happens. I feel no guilt.
Local markets, the bakery that knows you, as does the cheese guy, the meat guys near us and the women with a pop-up fish stand, of all things. Vegetables from the market.
This is where France starts to feel like the France of your imagining.
Prices can be better there than supermarkets for produce in season.
It’s usually coming from much closer, the food actually tastes like something. Strawberries remind you of their seasonality. Tomatoes have flavor. Supermarkets generally offer lots of flavorless produce.
If you’ve figured out better sources, workarounds, or things I’ve completely missed, I’d love to hear it. Especially the stuff that took you too long to find.
Please, tell me.
Not Found in Translation.
Or the supermarket
I had no idea how many “health food” things I bought until I got here. I use brewer’s yeast a lot. I couldn’t get it. I am still searching for good brown rice consistently.
That said: pantry resupply sites we like.
La Fourche is an online organic/health food store. Great, but stuff will come in 1-2 weeks & there is a small membership fee. It’s worth it for us – I have a referral code that’ll save you €20.
Dry goods, bulk items, great house brands. Less about convenience and more about building the pantry. Buying once so you don’t keep buying the same thing at higher prices, and lower quality.
Biocoop is the type of organic story you can smugly walk around, smugly confident that most of the food is good, morally or otherwise, but it’ll cost you. But their chocolate covered vanilla marshmallow bears (ourson guimauve vanille chocolat) are the best possible combination of all of those things.
So fluffy.
Kazidomi — Useful for organic pantry staples. Overlaps with La Fourche—sometimes fills different gaps & house brands are excellent. We use La Fourche, but depending on how you shop, this may make more sense. For us, the €5/month pays for itself in the quality and cost of house brands.
Picard, the frozen food spot, delivers! Freezer space is at a premium, so these are rare — small orders fill our icebox. All frozen, but vegetables can be better than supermarket versions, and basics—sauces, grains, even some prepared items—are incredible shortcuts. Their sauces are sold in cubes, which will change how you cook.
it seems everyone has an opinion about Picard.Read the reviews for information & entertainment. We do on order maybe every 3-4 months & it inevitably includes a pizza.
Junk
A personal cheat code for pizza– made in Italy, aged crust. French pizzas drop off a cliff from there– with the exception of purely French combinations. Brie and walnuts, yes; 4 cheeses, if French, yes; andouillette, if that’s your thing, is likely a win. Non-French ingredients on supermarket pizzas are tragic.
Brets chips are amazing, even if every flavor is not. Mushroom works for me, even falafel, but I haven’t had a BBQ chip here that I’ve liked yet.
Recipes & Applications
One of the first things I did with quality Bretagne butter, still met with shock by French friends, but it’s really, really good.
You should also be making miso butter.
Habanero Compound Butter
This fixes meals. Spread it on bread, melt it over vegetables, finish beans, drop it onto grilled meat or fish. It turns whatever you already have into something more interesting.
Ingredients
100g good butter (room temperature)
1 fresh habanero (or ½ if you want to be cautious. I’d suggest you be cautious.)
1 small clove garlic
Zest of ½ lime (or lemon if that’s what you have)
1–2 tsp lime juice (or lemon)
Small handful fresh herbs (any mix works):
parsley
cilantro
chives
Pinch of salt
I add black pepper, but I put that in everything.
Method
- Finely mince habanero
(And wash your hands. You only forget once.)
2. Mash everything together
In a bowl, mix until fully combined. Add lime juice gradually & work it in.
3. Spoon onto parchment, roll into a log, refrigerate.
Cut in thin slices to use.
Habanero heat builds—start lighter than you think. If your butter is really red, treat it like uranium.
How We Use It
Cautiously. A little can go a long way:
- Melted over roasted vegetables
- Finishing steaks, sauteed or grilled chicken, shrimp
- Stirred into lentils or chickpeas
- On bread (especially sweeter breads—this is probably the best use)
- eggs
Appendix: Rarer stuff you get delivered
Mexican
MexGrocer EU — A solid all-around option. Masa harina (the right grind!), dried chiles, beans, sauces. Genuine basics with some great additional materials and tools.
La Esquinita France-based, reliable, and easier for repeat orders. Good balance between staples and specialty items.
Pan-Asian
Asia Marché
Broad and practical. Covers multiple cuisines in one place, which is often what you need. If I order online, it’s from them.
Thanh Bình
Strong Southeast Asian focus. Useful for both dry goods and more specific ingredients.
Waysia - Good if you want to stock up in one go. Can be pricier.
La Grande Épicerie de Paris Expensive, but you can find the widest range of international products here
Indian & South Asian
Dookan — a huge selection and a lot of familiar stuff from Queens, but this is one of the only places I’ve seen jaggery and I will want mango pickle and chutney soon.
Hot Sauces
This was a big thing for us.
Hot sauces will show up in beer specialty stores (for some reason), hipster epiceries and culturally-focused markets.
Sauce Piquante Online grocery devoted to hot sauces. Wide range, not just novelty.
Martin Smaller-batch, French hot sauces. Delicious, with occasionally odd mixes.
Dame Besson hot sauces - Habanero—use cautiously. Delicious. The jars don’t last long with us. There’s a squeeze bottle for some, but it’s a terrible design.
Sonia Bethial Sauce. Better bottle, delicious. Senegalese & found in markets serving that community. We went through a bottle in a week.
Encona - you will sometimes find this in Carrefour & it’s a steal, If I find the jerk seasoning, I will buy every bottle. The best legit BBQ sauce I have had here yet. UK sourced, Jamaican roots. If it says it’s hot, believe it. Useful pepper rating system on every bottle.
