Supermarchés de la rue de Belleville

To celebrate the end of our time here, we'd like to ask a favor of our readers: take a minute to read back through your favorite posts, and send your "top 3" list to panda.a.paris [at] gmail.com. We'll be collecting your submissions throughout the week, and next week (our last in Paris!) we'll post the results. Thanks in advance, and happy browsing!

Paris is best known as a city of light, of romance, of history and culture and beauty. It is not generally thought of as a big, dense, dirty place where 98% of daily existence is completely - and at times oppressively - mundane. But because Paris is, in fact, all of these things, it's important to be able to take the mundane and turn it into something more interesting. A trip to the supermarket, for instance. There are at least nine supermarkets within a five-block radius from where we live, which turns normally mundane food shopping into an exercise in self-image, fiscal discipline, and logistical savvy. In case you ever live where we do, here's a tour of your supermarket options.

The first supermarché you walk by on your way up the rue de Belleville from Métro Belleville is Ed.

Ed is a chain that clearly prides itself on being a cheap place to shop for a limited selection of food and household products. It also appears to be the supermarket that devotes the smallest percentage of its budget to appearance (there's an equally ugly - if slightly larger - Ed at Métro Pyrénées).

Next, you'll notice Chinese supermarkets on both sides of the street.

Given that you're walking through the heart of Belleville's Chinatown, it should come as no surprise that these stores are your one-stop-shop for all kinds of East Asian delicacies (and "delicacies"). Though poorly organized, the prices are rock-bottom, the service is efficient, and the produce is much fresher than at any of the chain supermarkets. We probably hit up "Les Halles de l'Asie" two or three times a week (it's just so convenient when walking from the métro to our apartment), which has made it easy for us to consume fewer processed foods and more fresh veggies and fresh-frozen seafood. Thanks, Chinese supermarkets!

Passing our apartment, the next supermarket is Belleville en Bio, which we've reviewed before. Considering we're East Coast Liberal hippies, we should probably shop at this all-organic store more often. But we're frugal East Coast Liberal hippies, and the "Bio" label in France (much like the "organic" label in the states) doubles prices without ensuring environement- and health-friendly products. Bummer.

Our go-to chain supermarché is Franprix, located at the corner of rue de Belleville and rue des Pyrénées (and again on rue de Belleville just above Métro Jourdain).

They just redid this store entirely, and it's too bad we weren't prepared for a before-and-after comparison, because the change is mind-boggling. In any case, Franprix sits in the middle of the supermarché hierarchy, above Ed and below Monoprix (see below) in terms of price, selection, and quality. We reguarly buy yoghurt, cereal, butter, cheese, condiments, household goods, and cheap wine here. Whereas Ed and the Chinese supermarkets are downhill from our apartment, Franprix is about a block uphill, giving it a logistical advantage (on the way home, it's easier to carry a heavy bag downhill).

Finally, Monoprix is the chain supermarché with the greatest selection, highest prices (even for the same exact products you get at Franprix and Ed for cheaper), and largest quantity of somewhat high-quality products. All Monoprix's have internal boulangeries, boûcheries, and (I think) poisonneries, each of which normally charge less for their wares than the individual food boutiques operating outside of Monoprix. The store also offers a (comparatively) large selection of clothing, kitchenware, and toiletries, putting it somewhere between a Shaw's/Publix/Giant/Acme and a Walmart/Kmart/Target.

We tend to shop at Monoprix when we want to get absolutely everything in one place - and even that's usually impossible. French stores, we've discovered, are aggressively territorial. We love this when we encounter it in a boulangerie, fromagerie, boucherie, cave à vins, or other "speciality shop," but as Americans we demand that our supermarkets constitute a one-stop-shop for all of our needs. The supermarchés we've been to here, however, don't aspire to that standard (and we're not the first to notice).

Supermarchés at which we haven't shopped regularly (or at all): Carrefour, Casino, Huit-à-Huit, Naturalia (another bio place), Shopi, or Leader Price. Basically, if you ever forget how big and ordinary a city Paris is, just think of all the supermarket options. That's what we do.