PARIS

The French capital’s 20th arrondissement is a snapshot of modern Paris. Beat a trail around its historic streets to discover pockets of old-school Gallic charm alongside a feast of international cuisine.

- Peter Yeung

It’s mid-morning, and Belleville is a giant wrestling match of food. Along its boulevards’ crammed pavements, Malian grocers are flogging sackloads of yam and plantain, muscular Chinese workmen are hauling crates of pak choi and aubergines, and Tunisian vendors are deep-frying sugary bambaloni pastries in quantities great enough to induce diabetes. The pace is relentless. The scent is sweet and the colours are a blur. It’s a cauldron of contemporary Paris — far from the cliches of French cuisine. Here, Breton galettes are cheek-by-jowl with Chinese jianbing pancakes; Provençal stews with Moroccan tagines; and traditional French baguettes with Vietnamese bánh mì.

On the terrace of Aux Folies, a venerable local bar, regulars languidly observe all this activity over a croissant and café au lait. “This is a neighbourhood of the people,” says Wally Senhadji, an Algerian who began working here in the 1990s. “It has a beautiful mixture. There’s nowhere else like it.”

Densely populated and stuffed with delicacies, Belleville is perfect for flaneurs and its food is best sampled on foot. Up the steep, slanting Rue de Belleville towards the Pyrénées Metro station, for example, there’s featherlight Syrian falafel; sticky-sweet Cantonese char siu bao (barbecue-pork buns salty Colombian black bean empanadas; fatty, Laotian saï oua sausage; garlic-coated Turkish lahmacun (flatbread); and some of the finest bistros in Paris. If Hemingway called Paris a moveable feast, then Belleville is a walkable feast.