Raymond Blanc's Paris

As foodie trips go, this takes some beating. I’m walking around Paris with top French chef Raymond Blanc.

- Max Wooldridge

From dimly-lit but good-value bistros and top restaurants to profiteroles and chocolate fondants, the Michelinstarred chef is showing me his favourite places in Paris to shop, eat and down a glass or two of wine.

We’ve reached Le Marais, the city’s old aristocratic district. We’re wandering around the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the city’s oldest food market in rue de Bretagne. The small market is so-named because it was once an orphanage where all the children dressed in red.

No red-clothed youngsters roam here anymore. Nowadays other vivid colours dominate: the market is a riot of flowers, including bouquets of multi-coloured tulips, plump green asparagus spears, shards of pink rhubarb and bulbs of purple artichokes.

And then there are delightful sweet and spicy cooking smells coming from endless food stalls serving varied street food, a testament to the city’s vibrant multi-cultural influences.

Any pause in conversation, of which there are not many with Raymond Blanc, is filled with the renowned chef fills with his enthusiasm for Paris’s markets.

Blanc says he loves to wander around and lose himself in food markets like this whenever he visits Paris.

“All of Parisian life is here in a place like this,” Blanc says.

He also enthuses about Marché Président Wilson, a fresh food market in the 16th arrondissement.

It’s time to go shopping. Food shopping, of course. Nearby, at 93, Boulevard Beaumarchais, we visit one of Blanc’s favoured food shops, an upmarket grocery called Maison Plisson, a bit like Paris’s answer to Whole Foods or Dean & DeLuca.