Portraits of Belleville: Mme. la Bouchère

Meet our local butcher, whom we consistently choose over all the other options. We're not on a first-name basis yet (we're still at the "ça va?" "oui, et vous?" phase) but hopefully someday we will be, because this woman is kind of amazing. She has many children - we've heard 5 - and works pretty much non-stop at her boucherie. Until a few weeks ago, her husband ran a small grocery specializing in Middle Eastern ingredients (called Épicerie Le Caire) right across the street. That store had to close because rent was going up, and our butcher organized a petition drive among locals to try to reverse the rent hike.

Sure, we could go elsewhere, but this bouchère has us hooked. Reasonable prices, a good selection, everything is halal (no pork!), and best of all, service with a great big heartwarming smile.

Meat Me in Belleville Part Deux

In the second installment in our Meat Me in Belleville series, we get down to basics and confront our own squeamishness over what has become a familiar sight:


I mean, yeah, obviously, someone has to deliver the meat to the boucherie. And I guess I'm glad to see that it comes in entire legs and sides and whatnot, instead of prepackaged morsels. I'm not so excited about the lack of sanitary precautions, like gloves or anything separating the meat from, you know, everything else. But that's just the OCD/over-sanitized American part of me talking.

The crazy thing is, I see deliveries like this almost every day, all along the Rue du Faubourg du Temple. I'm curious about whether deliveries to butchers are as public as this elsewhere in Paris. Can anyone living in the 16th or 8th tell me if they've ever observed raw meat traversing the sidewalk? Maybe deliveries are made to the ritzy parts of town in the wee hours of the morning and to the less ritzy parts in plain daylight.

Most times I just see half-empty trucks sitting on the side of the road, but on the day I saw this truck, I actually got to watch them offload the meat from the trucks and transport it to the boucherie.


First, using an automatic conveyor, they bring a row of meat (hanging on hooks) from the depths of the truck to the back, then lower it towards the street level. One of the guys then shoulders a side of beef, lifts it off the hook, and starts walking/shuffling. . .

. . . across the sidewalk, in front of the unsuspecting mother and daughter . . .

. . . and into the front door of the boucherie. Brilliant. I wish this mode of beef delivery would come back into fashion in the US, since it would be helpful for people to have a better idea of how meat is transported and delivered. Food industry transparency! They're way ahead of us on that here in France, or at least, here in Belleville.

Meat Me in Belleville

There are many things that make our neighborhood interesting. We're on a big hill - only one other place in Paris can really boast that (Montmartre). We're in one of the former "quatiers populaires," which means the opposite of what you're probably thinking: Belleville is the traditional home of the "masses," the blue-collar worker-types, so there's little of the fancy, Haussmannian, Belle Époque architecture you find elsewhere in the city, and population density is high.

One more interesting factoid, near and dear to my heart: there are four different types of places where you can get meat in our neighborhood.

1) The supermarket. We have both a Franprix and an Ed on our street, and just like in American supermarkets the meat there is relatively cheap, of fairly low quality, and of dubious origins.

2) Chinese restaurants/markets. There are too many of these to count between our place and the métro, and it's impossible not to be awed by what you see hanging in the windows as you walk by.

From Left to Right: Duck, ??? and Ribs

Inside the Chinese markets, you can get all manner of awesome animal parts, like heart, hoof, tail, ear, and more.

3) Boucheries (literally, butchers). Here's where things get really interesting, because normally the word "Boucherie" is paired with "Charcuterie." But on our street, which caters to a sizable North African community, none of the boucheries offer charcuterie because the latter (sausages, sliced meats, pre-cooked meats, pâté) is pork-based. Instead, the boucheries are halal - no pork, nothing pre-cooked (exception: whole chickens, as per the French tradition described below). And because the word "boucherie" alone sounds awkward, the place closest to our apartment adds "epicerie" to its sign in place of "charcuterie":

Around the corner in two different directions there are also kosher boucheries, which I group with the halal boucheries. Except for the different lettering (Arabic vs. Hebrew) they're basically selling the same things.

4) Finally, we have a few "traditional," "typically French" boucheries/charcuteries. These often entice you in by roasting chickens in outdoor ovens, which emit unbelievably wonderful smells, and which warm you as you walk by.

Disclaimer: this is just around the corner, not technically on our street.

While boucherie/charcuterie establishments are common, I find that boucherie/charcuterie/triperie places are less so. (Triperies sell organs and appendages, like brain, liver, lung, feet, tongue, etc.)

Basically, living in Belleville has forced me to re-classify stores and food products I thought were uniform all around France. This is an activity more and more French will have to engage in as their culture becomes more heterogeneous, welcoming influences from North Africa, China, and beyond! (I'm thinking Mars, around 2030.)