Call me a geek, but my favourite part about travelling is visiting the local supermarkets. Obviously, I love museums and old buildings and reading the travel guide front to back, but there is nothing like chartering the unknown inside the belly of a different culture’s eating habits. Since going gluten-free, I practice this art of insanity in Germany, too, and my love for supermarkets and small grocery stores has grown wild. While in Paris, gourmet central of the world, I visited Franprix and Naturalia supermarkets. These are some of the gluten-free things I saw. FranPrix klNothing mind-blowing (except canned Brussel sprouts – yuck!), but still fun to see. At FranPrix (even the small one near Centre Georges Pompidou) you could find gluten-free barilla and a wide selection of gluten-free chips. I was a bit freaked out at the popcorn made from rice flour (didn’t buy it), and was very pleased to see refrigerated buckwheat crepes, which I would have taken with me, had I had access to a kitchen. Naturalia had a large selection of vegetarian burger patties. 01 Naturalia klAnd even frozen lemon tarts! 95 Paris Goes Vegetarian and Glutenfree klNaturalia’s gluten-free shelf was huge and they even had packaged gluten-free bread available in the store’s bakery (didn’t try it). 02 Naturalia klOverall, I found the Parisian supermarkets nicer than the ones we have here in Cologne. I also walked into what I feel must be every proper cooks nightmare: a supermarket featuring only frozen food. You cannot -ever – buy anything fresh there. Can’t believe they would have these in Paris – out of all places! To be fair, the part of town we saw these in weren’t the most hip and spectacular of places (at least I think), but it still made me sad to see.01 Picard klI mean. I can’t even. There are no words. Ever. HORRID. Anway, I hope you enjoyed the travel-posts on the blog. Please let me know. I’m not sure whether I should do them again for the summer (maybe there are already lots of similar sites out there?), and feedback would be much appreciated! 🙂 Thank you! Just FYI, you can find the first, second and third posts of this series here.

One thought on “Parisian Supermarkets under the Microscope: Naturalia, Picard and FranPrix”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.