Paris Gourmet Food Stores – A Guide For Food Lovers

It isn't only museums like the Louvre, or monuments like the Eiffel Tower, or parks like Jardin du Luxembourg — the city and its culture are also defined by the plentitude of Paris gourmet food stores, where you can shop for the best of the products that make the country a culinary mecca. Think caviar, foie gras, oysters, cheese, champagne and of course, truffles. For many visitors and would-be travelers, it's food that creates the irresistible pull to the City of Gourmet Delights.

To get the biggest bite of famous French food, plan your culinary itinerary in advance. Otherwise it's easy to miss the food shops that offer rare delicacies, often only available in Paris. Wander the narrow streets of the most interesting parts of the city (the 1st, the 2nd, The Marais, the 16th, the 17th and Saint-Germain-des-Prés and stop into any shop that catches your fancy or your interest. Let's take a look at a handful of Paris gourmet food stores.

Gourmet Traditions

Gourmet preserves and sauces line the shelf at Maison Perrotte

Many of the Paris gourmet food stores were created by and for the bourgeois class that arose in the late 19th century. So often the story begins with a young man from Brittany or Normandy selling fruit or seafood from a wheelbarrow on the streets of Paris. It's from that kind of humble beginning that many of the gourmet empires begin, like Fauchon, Hediard (now defunct), Lafitte and other food specialists.

But you don't always have to seek out a gourmet specialist to find and enjoy the great foods of France. Les petites epiceries, the small grocery stores found on virtually every street in the city, manage to pack in more goodness than most of the fine food stores you're likely to find back home.

Prunier at Place de la Madeleine

Inside Prunier, with the temperature-controlled caviar tasting room to the left

For over a century Place de la Madeleine has been the place to go for specialty gourmet food in Paris. Gourmet grocer Fauchon started here, and so did its rival, Hediard. Alas, both of those gourmet landmarks are closed, due to the pandemic, shopping habit changes, or company makeovers. Luckily, Prunier is still here.

Across the place from the former Fauchon location is the spot where another 19th-century young man, Alfred Prunier, opened his first oyster restaurant in 1872, soon discovering that his clientele couldn't get enough of the caviar he sold on the side. Thus was a new business born.

In 1918 his son Emile began farming sturgeon on the banks of the Dordogne river to keep up with supply. (That's a good thing since it is now illegal to import Russian caviar to France.) Today, you can visit Prunier's main floor tasting room with its glass-enclosed, refrigerated sampling booth to taste a variety of caviar. (There's another location on Avenue Victor Hugo in the 16th.) Prunier is also famous for its smoked salmon and other seafood. There's a very pleasant restaurant on the upper level.

• 15 Place de la Madeleine
• 16 Avenue Victor Hugo, 16th Arrondissement
• Prunier Website…

La Grande Epicerie de Paris

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The patisseries case at La Grande Epicerie de Paris – we ate one of those tartes!

If you're only able to visit one Paris gourmet food store, it has to be this one. La Grande Epicerie de Paris is the large and wonderful gourmet supermarket attached to the department store jewel of the Left Bank, Le Bon Marché. It's everything you would want in your local food store (that is, if your local store were fabulous). Of course, it's full of the gourmet specialty foods that make Paris a food capital and it consistently ranks among the best French food stores Paris has to offer.

Feeling a little peckish while shopping? Then stop in the seafood department where you can sit down at a table and order up a plate of fresh oysters with a glass of crisp white wine. Elsewhere in the store there's a full restaurant suspended over an open space, a wine cellar in the… cellar, and an amazing home & kitchen store upstairs. In recent years another outpost of La Grande Epicerie opened in the tony quartier of Passy in the 16th.

Ladurée – Home of the Macaron

The elegant interior of Ladurée on Rue Royale

Although it seems like macarons have been around forever, it was only in 1931 that the modern macaron was invented at patisserie Ladurée. The history of Ladurée itself dates back to 1862 when (in another typical story) a young man named Louis-Ernest Ladurée, a miller from southwest France, opened a boulangerie at 16 Rue Royale. Today, Ladurée is still the city's premier tea house, patisserie, and chocolatier. And macarons are once again the rage of Paris.

Foie Gras & Confit de Canard at Lafitte

Goose & duck products line the shelf at Lafitte, 2011 photo by Mark Craft

Smack in the center of all things Paris, on Île Saint-Louis, is Lafitte, purveyors of quality foie gras and similar products and one of the lesser-know of the Paris gourmet food stores. In 1920, Pierre Lafitte began to sell wild game birds and foie gras in his native town in southwest France. He eventually opened a store in Paris.

Lafitte's foie gras d'oie, made from goose liver (most foie gras today is made with duck liver), is a luxury treat, and not to be missed. All of their ducks and geese are grain-fed and raised free-range on small farms in southwest France.

• 8 Rue Jean du Bellay, Ile Saint Louis
• Website…

La Maison de la Truffe

The name says it all. This is the go-to place in Paris for truffles, one of the luxury staples of France. Originally a cooperative of truffle growers from Provence, today La Maison De la Truffe sells fresh diamant noir (black truffles) at their Paris shop, at La Grande Epicerie de Paris, and at Paris Gourmet Lafayette. Not to be missed: the restaurant with its all-truffle menu — there's a generous amount of truffles in each and every dish!

• 19 Place de la Madeleine
• Website…

The Best Cheese Shops in Paris

A fromager presents his favorite cheese, photo by Mark Craft

Brie, Roquefort & All That's Ripe

If your idea of heaven smells faintly like Camembert, you'll want to make time for a proper cheese pilgrimage. Paris is full of fromageries where wheels of Brie de Meaux and stacks of aged Comté are treated with reverence and possibly a little fear. Cheese isn't a garnish here — it's a national emblem.

The staff at top cheese shops will help you build the perfect plate, pair it with wine, and even vacuum-pack your haul for the flight home. Not sure where to start? Our guide to the 10 Best Cheese Shops in Paris narrows it down to the friendliest, smelliest, most delicious counters in town.

Top Paris Chocolate Boutiques

Pierre Hermé boutique near St-Sulpice, 2018 photo by Mark Craft

Cocoa with a Capital C

There's chocolate, and then there's Paris chocolate — polished pralines, dark ganaches, and whisper-thin bars wrapped like couture. Maison du Chocolat and Pierre Hermé are household names here, and not because they're resting on reputation. These shops are laboratories of cocoa obsession.

Inside the boutiques, you'll find lineups of glossy confections, neatly sorted by percentage, origin, and outrageousness. Fancy something with yuzu, piment d'Espelette, or a pinch of sea salt from Brittany? You're in the right arrondissement. For the full list of best chocolate shops in Paris, see our guide — chocolate this good deserves its own page.

Best Paris Food Markets for Gourmet Finds

The market on Rue Poncelet, 2007 photo by Mark Craft

Paris Food Markets with Flair

Gourmet doesn't always mean gold leaf and gift wrap. Sometimes it just means "really good food." Much of the best food in Paris is sold from behind a wobbly wooden table under a striped awning. The city's open-air markets are full of vendors who know their ducks from their guinea fowl — and don't mind giving you a sample to prove it.

The Marché des Enfants Rouges, Rue Cler, Marché d'Aligre and dozens of neighborhood markets are filled with seasonal specialties, local cheeses, terrines, and fresh-baked bread. If you want the best food stores in Paris with a side of local color, bring a bag and your best French phrases.

More Ways to Eat Like a Parisian

Tasting a flight of wines with French cheese in a Paris wine cellar

Tours, Tastings & Floating Dinners

Gourmet food stores are just the beginning. You can follow the scent of roasted cocoa on a Paris chocolate tour, swirl and sip your way through a wine tasting, or enjoy duck confit while gliding past the Eiffel Tower on a dinner cruise. The city has plenty of hands-on food experiences to round out your itinerary.

Our Paris food lovers guides point you to the tastiest ways to fill an afternoon or evening. Want to visit markets with a local guide? Learn the difference between pâté and terrine? Snack your way through Le Marais? Now's your chance. Just book ahead — the best stuff fills up fast.

Paris Gourmet Food Stores – Why They Matter

A VIP dinner cruise on the Seine: another Paris gourmet experience

Paris is a city where people still shop for dinner every day. Parisians buy cheese from cheesemongers, baguettes from bakers, and chocolate from chocolate makers. The big stores are fun, but the small ones — where someone takes the time to wrap your Comté in paper and tie it with string — are the ones that stick with you.

If you're serious about food, give yourself time to browse, snack, ask questions, and maybe even decide on a tin of foie gras for your checked luggage. Paris gourmet food stores aren't just about what's in the bag — they're about how good it felt to find it.

Fauchon Paris – R.I.P.

The facade of the former Fauchon Paris boutique at la Madeleine

In 1880 Auguste Fauchon arrived in Paris from Calvados with a wheelbarrow full of fresh apples to sell. He soon moved on to selling wine and spirits and other products until, in 1886, the barely-30-year-old Auguste opened a store on Place de la Madeleine in the 8th Arrondissement. Before long, his food store was coffees, teas, confiture, chocolate, and other fine foods. However, it was his wife, Madame Fauchon, who invented the first luxury food brand when she had the bright idea of putting their name on every product they sold.

For years Fauchon filled two retail spaces that dominated an entire corner of Place de la Madeleine. However, lengthy closures imposed by the 2020-2021 coronavirus lockdown and the lack of tourists in Paris resulted in an 89% drop in sales, causing Fauchon to permanently close the doors of both spaces.

Fauchon as a gourmet grocer is not entirely gone. It still offers online sales and operates seventy-three shops and restaurants around the world. These days, though, there are more Fauchon locations in Japan than in France. Some good news, though, is that there is a new Fauchon cafe and a Fauchon luxury hotel on the opposite corner of Place de la Madeleine.