Food city

Art wall on Rue Ordener covers up view of the old SNCF station.

The admonition against grocery shopping on an empty stomach applies even more keenly in Paris, where you want to buy ... everything. I am living at the foot of Rue du Poteau, one of the city's great food streets where independent boucheries, boulangeries and fromageries beckon like sirens on the rocks of Scylla. Unlike Homer, I always give in.

Home base: Blue-collar, ethnically mixed neighborhood around Place Jules Joffrin.

Always on the lookout for la fromage affine.

Rue du Poteau, a deadly street for calorie watchers. The locals seem to shop frequently and carefully, hunting for just the right ingredients.

Another galaxy: Slow-cooked, salt-cured rabbit and duck in a can.

Stylish shopfront signage evokes an erstwhile Paris. The city's residents are by every measure highly discerning epicureans but endearingly lack self-awareness of this fact. They simply won't tolerate mediocrity.