Montorgueil or as I like to call it, FOOD STREET!  From one corner to the other, Montorgueil brims with culinary sights and delights.  Located close to the historic marketplace of of Les Halles, Montorgueil is home to historic eateries, bakeries and markets.  After chancing upon the street in 2002, I swore to find it and properly document it on the return journey.

Olives anyone?  Everything to do with and derived from the olive tree can be found at Olivier & Company.  Featuring specialties from the Provence region of France as well as various Italian provences, the store has intriguing culinary items as well as specialities for the bath and home.

Wine shopping for this year's Beaujolais Nouveau as well as some fine champaign to toast in the New Year.  Beaujolais Nouveau is a sweet young red wine that represents the first wine of the year's season.  Extremely popular during the holiday season, the wine is traditionally used to toast in the New Year in Europe. In order to ensure a sure supply for the yearly celebration, the wine is hurriedly shipped to remote regions of the world as soon as it is ready.  Talk about just in time delivery!  At the same time, great values in wines can be find at every corner.   Even with the conversion rate of the Euro, extraordinary wines are amazingly priced with 5 or 10 Euro bottles being common. 

There's something about a traditional farmer's style fruit stand that seems to make the fruit more appealing.  Perhaps it's the freshness or perceived freshness and appearance of the fruit.  It's that certain something that is often missing from today's mass market produce in supermarkets.  Le Palais du Fruit takes this concept and expands upon it in terms of selection.  Literally a palace of fruit, the shop features fruits, both traditional and exotic, at the peak of freshness.  Exotics like the Dragon Fruit which is a native to Asia and seldomly seen in the United States are commonly found at fruit stands in France.  Others like the Lychee or "Lychee Nut" as the French translation seems to call it can also be commonly found.

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