Paris food tours?
 

I'm looking for some recommendations for small-group food tours in Paris.
We love fresh markets, chocolate, cheese, wine, and sampling French specialties.

Ideas?
Barb

Check out Paris By Mouth, they do what you are describing. We really enjoyed our tour of the Marais with them in March.

Paris by Mouth is a font of great local information, but also check out La Cuisine (just near the Hotel de Ville) for both its cooking classes and food tours:

http://lacuisineparis.com/

Hi Barb,

I also loved my tour with Paris by Mouth. I did a cheese workshop, and I thought it was great. We first went over the many types of cheeses, and the presenter gave us lots of instruction about terroir, aging processes, etc. Then we went to a wine shop, where we paired the cheeses with many different wines; we spent a few hours tasting and chatting and enjoying the company. It was a great way to learn about cheeses & wines, and to taste a lot of them.

I'm going to do the same tour on my next trip to Paris this November.

Have fun as you plan!

s

+1 Paris by Mouth
I was convinced after reading swanday2000's trip report awhile ago (a few years ago?). The cheese and wine tour was great!

The food tours are quite expensive. You can visit all those places and purchase all those foods easily on your own without being herded around.

Just visit any roving market or market street on your own. Those not frequented by tourists (with their backpacks, cameras, self sticks) are best, such as the rue Poncelet neighborhood.

Thank you for your kind words k_marie!

s

We loved Paris by Mouth-- we did a taste of St Germain and it was fantastic. Worth every penny.

And I have to disagree with djkbooks...we would never have even known about the cheeses we sampled on our tour to order them on our own (we also don't know enough French much to order much but blue cheese). We were given so much info about the origins of the cheeses, and cheeses only available at that time (Christmas, for us) and some of the small producers as part of the tour. The same with the unusual chocolates we sampled. You would have to knowledge about these foods and what is available to be able to do it on your own. We weren't herded around and most of our sampling took place in a wine shop.

I also disagree with the idea that you can easily do a food tour on your own. There are over 375 kinds of cheese in France, thousands of grape appellations (which bear nothing in common with the US nomenclature) - just to begin with.

What was described is just the same as going to the supermarket or outdoor vendors and blindly picking out stuff you're not familiar with - or worse, buying exactly the same thing you would at home. Anyone can point to this or that cheese or piece of chocolate and purchase it from a salesperson. But if you are truly interested in learning about food, why would you do that?

Of course, if you already consider yourself an expert, you don't need anybody's help about anything, and have probably never been on a decent food tour.

Most importantly - shopkeepers are busy people, and street vendors even more so. Though happy to answer quick questions, they are not able to give lots of information about a variety of products. Nor will they give tasting samples of expensive products to people who are obviously not interested in buying anything. Exceptions to this rule are the puny little cubes currently being offered by a few expensive shops targeting Anglo tourists.

A decent food tour is actually a learning experience that cannot be beat. The guides are on good terms with the salespeople and do not abuse the privilege of bringing a small group into the shop or to the stalls. There are lots of websites offering "market and foodie tours" and I would be wary of them, since it's really easy for anyone to just drag you around from store to store and take your money for an hour or so of pleasant chit-chat.

The payoff for a decent tour like PBM's is at the end, when the group sits down to actually discuss why such a cheese or wine or pastry was chosen over all the others. What makes it special, what you might try if you didn't enjoy this particular thing, what can you find at home that might come close, etc. That's what makes the PBM tours so valuable - and absolutely worth the money.

Hi,

We didn't want to spend a lot of money in a Food Tour in Paris and we found a great alternative by buying a "Food Pass". It lets you taste a wide selection of French products in different stores, and provides information about all the products. I had never heard of this concept before but it has been a great introduction to French food as it was our first time in Paris. We tried one sold by Food Trip but I don't know if other companies are offering others.

http://le-food-trip.com/eng/tastingpass.php

M

I did a Paris by Mouth wine tour a few years ago and loved it! Very nice. (And no I could not have gotten the same experience just wandering into bars LOL!)

I have also done the Paris Walks Chocolate tour which was good!