I’ve written a lot about the joys of shopping in France’s open-air markets, where you can get the freshest meat and produce. The Internet is filled with recommendations for the best markets in Paris.

We just enjoyed one in a small town during a recent visit to our friends Tim and James. In the central square of Baugé, you can buy everything from tapenade to rotisserie chicken to fresh fish to a huge array of produce. There is even a stand that sells only goat cheese. All this 175 miles from Paris and 25 miles from the nearest city of any size.

People line up nicely there, too.

But it turns out markets take up only a small share of France consumers’ shopping expenses—5%, according to one survey.

Where do people buy most of their food? At the supermarket.

Source: Statista, data from 2023

Half of respondents say they most often shop at the French equivalent of Kroger’s or Giant, and another 20% prefer the French equivalents of low-cost Aldi. (Aldi is German but it seems to be in the process of taking over the world).

Equivalent, though, isn’t the right word. French grocery stores differ from American ones in strange and sometimes delightful ways.

Take my own neighborhood.

In a shopping mall 15 minutes’ walk from my apartment is one of the largest supermarkets I’ve ever seen. Technically in French it’s a hypermarché, hypermarket. That doesn’t mean everyone runs around frantically all the time. It’s just really big.

Owned by France’s biggest grocery chain, E. Leclerc, this store has everything. A bookstore, for instance, located next to the cell-phone and gaming section.

Also: a fishmonger. And a butcher. And one heck of a fruit-and-vegetable section.

Photo: Charles Trueheart

And a case, probably Christmas-influenced, featuring baby goat, goose, bison, deer and—I am not making this up—marinated kangaroo.

And then there’s the liquor section, just down from the freezer compartment.

Sure, you might say, my grocery store in the U.S. sells booze too.

But Cognac? Priced at up to $4,500 a bottle.

Also, I can walk to this store. Also, they deliver.

But the Paris grocery scene is not always this luxurious. More and more, I see small chain convenience stores tucked into city streets, selling essentials whose quality is uneven.

These two are three doors apart from each other on the Avenue de Malakoff in the posh 16th arrondissement.

There’s even one on the Champs-Elysées.

And then there’s the Monoprix in our neighborhood, where we do most of our non-market shopping (or did, until Charlie said just the other day that he was never going there again). It’s small, dirty, crowded and poorly stocked.

Might as well shop at the open-air market.