Five Butters and a Falafel Wrap
Travel Notes on a Food Culture That Stayed Intact
One of my favorite parts of visiting France is going to the grocery store. My conversational French is terrible, but my food vocabulary is okay, and that says a lot about me. During our last trip there I bravely left the kids and translating husband behind at the Airbnb, and ventured out on my own, where food discoveries awaited me at the grocery store, including the awesome sight of 3 refrigerated aisles full of cheese!
I’ve always loved grocery shopping. I love browsing around and noticing. There are possibilities around every corner. I like watching people, some in a hurry, some stopping and chatting, the grocery store is a center of community, culture and place. In France, I’m particularly delighted around every corner of the Monoprix, happy to observe all the things like a detective: “What is that food?” “What is it for?” “What does it taste like?”
I was even brave enough to ask a clerk, “Ou est le moutard?”, and furthermore, to understand his reply. That’s because showing frustration defies all language barriers, and that summer we visited in 2023 there was a national shortage of mustard. A sign by the check stand read, “One mustard per family.” That’s awful for France and I felt the sting of that pronouncement. One sweet old lady behind me in line started rapidly explaining to me her frustration about something she had purchased, with her sales receipt in hand. I did my best, and that counts in France, and she spoke more slowly and we both tried hard.
One thing I had to do, out of the view of our French family whom we were there to visit, was sample butter. Not as in, try a little of this butter, but as in a full scale glutinous and shameful tasting party for one. It was a dream come true. I purchased 5 different butters at the Monoprix, not really knowing which brand was which and then sampled each one by slicing off a chunk and serving it to myself straight from a butterknife. It was quite an exhilarating experience that I highly recommend. Every butter was different, all exquisite, with unique flavor profiles: nutty, richer, deeper, more cultured, less cultured, flowery- yes, a myriad of different tastes. In my opinion, French butter can stand alone as a food unto itself, and I will hold to that. It was a taste experiment I didn’t really want to do in front of the sweet Aunties, for while they are endlessly patient with my American food confusion, this is one of those very weird things only tourists would do, and I was avoiding everything from, “what are you doing?” “Why are you eating so much butter?”, and “Why isn’t there a baguette?”- possibly the worst offence of the 3.
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