Pre-prepared food in Paris
 

I am new to this forum, so please bear with me if this has already been covered.

My daughter, a friend, and I will be visiting Paris for the first time, and will be there through New Year's Eve. We have an apartment on St-Paul in the 4eme, and are wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to eat in after a mid-day nap. However, instead of cooking dinner ourselves that night, we are wondering if we can order prepared dinners from any of the gourmet shops. This might be a problem, as many of them are closed on New Year's Eve, but maybe the meals won't be too bad re-heated, as they are meant to be in the first place. If any of you have done this in the past, please let us know what your experience has been.

Of course, after our late dinner, we will take a bottle of champagne, our glasses, and stroll along the Seine, wishing everyone "Bonne Annee".

Between the fresh markets and the Picard for frozen dishes, you should do ok in an apartment... I have read that some restaurants are prepared to provide meals but maybe that's if they know the customer..? I think the French term for 'take out' is "emporter".

http://www.picard.fr/

Practically every traiteur in town is open all morning, every Sunday.

I can't begin to conceive of imagining they'd close the mmorning of New Year's Eve. What gives you the impression they do?

No deli in Paris would dream of closing for Christmas or New Year's (although they will close a little earlier than usual).
And the Picard frozen food chain has absolutely fabulous items than even the most bourgeois French rave about. The capon stuffed with foie gras is one of the holiday favorites, although I have never eaten it myself.

The reason I think that the gourmet food markets are closed on this day, is because I went to Hediard's site and Gourmet Lafayette's, and they have a notice that says they are closed on New Year's Eve. I thought maybe we could pick up our meals the day before, but I don't if someone has had a bad experience doing this sort of thing. Someone has told me that some restaurants will prepare meals for take-out, and some will even deliver, but I have no idea which ones those would be.

Thanks, everyone, for your help. We won't have this problem on Christmas or Bank Holiday in London because we'll be staying in a hotel that has three restaurants.

>...the Picard frozen food chain has absolutely fabulous items than even the most bourgeois French rave about. <

That's because they are so....bourgeois.

:)

((I))

For anybody who doesn't know, Lafayette Gourmet is just a fancy Monoprix. The old name used to be Monoprix Lafayette until Monoprix absorbed the Prisunic chain. Since there was a Prisunic right behind Galeries Lafayette, they turned it into an 'ordinary' Monoprix, renamed the other one, and stocked it with some fancier items, not to mention the ridiculous little golden shopping carts. (Are they still there? -- I haven't set foot in the place in years.)