The New Belly of Paris

The traditional Parisian market is a familiar enough picture: a rainbow assortment of fruits and vegetables, ripe cheeses, gleaming fish, hanging meat. But at only a handful of the stands at a Parisian market is the seller also the producer. The rest comes from the Marché d’Intérêt National de Rungis, the largest wholesale market in the world — it’s the size of around three hundred football fields, with annual sales around €7.3 billion and a customer base that reaches as far as Belgium and England.

This monster market was created in 1969 to replace Les Halles, which had grown beyond the limits of cleanliness (and whose truck traffic had grown beyond the capacity of Paris’s city streets). Gone was the bustling and somewhat gritty Paris institution immortalized in Zola’s Belly of Paris. Grittiness is probably forbidden by EU regulations, but the new market, deep in the southern suburbs, certainly fills French bellies — one-fifth of the French population buys, if indirectly, from Rungis.

It’s a professionals-only market, and mere mortals are not normally granted access. Several companies conduct organized tours, however, which involve catching a 5 a.m. coach from central Paris. Business hours are midnight to midday, Monday through Saturday, with most of the action happening between 2 and 4 a.m.

First stop is the seafood building, which looks a bit like an airport terminal, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and white interiors. Much of it has already been packed up by the time we arrive — fishmongers aim to make it back to Paris by 6, to beat the morning traffic. The seafood arrives by truck, train and air — Polish frog legs, Scandinavian farmed salmon, French sea urchins, Atlantic swordfish and Japanese tuna.

Next is the triperie pavilion — squeamish readers, skip ahead. Here you’ll find innards, offal, trotters, heads and all the other parts you don’t often see at the local butcher. Cow carcasses hang from hooks attached to a track system which leads straight out to the pick-up area out back.

Poultry is the third stop. This building’s curved wooden ceiling stands in contrast with the market’s generally sterile industrial architecture, and the atmosphere is lively as well. Piles of boxes are filled with duck, partridge, quail, goose and chicken, from cheap factory-farmed product to high-quality chicken, wrapped in French flag ribbons. Apparently 40 per cent of the year’s profit is made in the lead-up to Christmas, on sales of foie gras and other luxury poultry products.

Onwards to the smelliest of the pavilions: dairy. The perfume of ripe Camembert hits the nostrils immediately. The French selection is dominated by enormous 35-kg. rounds of comté, as well as the usual brie and goat’s cheese, along with plenty of other varieties from small producers. Swiss, Italian, Greek and English cheeses are represented as well.

Next is the fruit and vegetable pavilion. In winter it’s mostly stocked with oranges, clementines and other citrus, mainly from Morocco. This is probably the most dangerous pavilion — speedy carts and forklifts are a hazard to toes.

The tour ends around 8:30 a.m. with a French breakfast of café et croissant. While we were spreading jam, the market’s workers were tucking into a steak tartare. The beginning of a day for some, the end for others.

My visit was booked through Visite Rungis and cost €75 (includes return travel from Paris, tour and breakfast).

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