I am in Paris. There’s little point telling you about chocolate you can’t buy, on Christmas Eve. So I’m going to tell you, this week and next, about Paris and maybe you can use this fallow period to plan a trip.
Paris is the city I’ve visited the most outside London. I used to come twice a year for work, back in the days when I was a fashion editor and I had a sort of secret boyfriend here (sssh), which made those visits all the more frisson-y.
The queues for the Louvre are so long that even I, in my privileged position as a press-card holder, can’t get close enough to wave my card at anyone. People smoke with a 1980s abandon, and the smoke, my daughter tells me, smells better than English smoke.
There are chocolate shops aplenty. Paris’s oldest is A La Mère de Famille. A must-visit. Full of character, it’s the type of shop (I visited the original branch on the rue du Faubourg Montmartre) Ernst Lubitsch might base a film around, and it bustles with life and variety. It is almost overwhelming in its selection. Go on a quiet day, when you’re not hungry or have young children in tow, and take your time, and a spare suitcase. Start with a box of selected chocolates, €17.
Debauve & Gallais is a little younger. It was started by Louis XVI’s chemist, Sulpice, who came up with a concoction of cocoa and sugar (the ‘pistoles’ are still on sale ) to help Marie Antoinette’s headache medicine go down better, although I suspect the guillotine proved a more permanent cure. The experience here was a little more austere, but every single one of the chocolates sampled was superb.
Follow Annalisa on X @AnnalisaB
