Paris was looking stunning this week. Sparkling blue skies reflected in the gentle flow of the Seine, warm April sun freshened by a gentle breeze, the pale early leaf of the willow trees, the pink candles on the chestnuts just breaking into flower… A veritable feast for the eyes.
Not, however, a feast for the stomach, if you happen to be on any sort of freefrom diet. With a very few honourable exceptions, gluten-free, milk-free, nut-free are not concepts with which the average Parisian eatery has any truck – or in which, it would appear, it has any interest. ‘Non’ was the standard reply when asked if any of their dishes were gluten free or milk/dairy free, followed by a grudging offering of a salad.
‘Pah – the French are five years behind everyone else! Impossible!’ was the verdict of the only café that we found on the left bank which offered gluten-free bread and a largely freefrom menu.
This was Judy’s (Rue de Fleurus just behind the Jardin de Luxembourg) where we had a delicious breakfast of smoothies and gluten-free toast from Paris’ only dedicated gluten-free bakery, Chambellan. Had we stayed around long enough, could have had a yummy gluten-free focaccia sandwich and a choice of eight gluten, lactose and sugar free desserts!
It is not that you cannot eat freefrom. Many dishes on standard menus are naturally freefrom but they are very unlikely to have been prepared in a freefrom environment. Indeed, given that allergy awareness is a pretty foreign concept (no little notes at the bottom of menus to ‘please talk to our staff if you have allergies’ or hieroglyphics beside dishes suggesting that they are gf, df, veg, nut free – or free of anything at all!) you could reasonably assume that gluten or dairy contamination would be rife.
So for those on freefrom diets who wish to sample the delights of April in Paris, Air BnB is probably the answer – if, after the clamp down on ‘illegal’ lettings, you can find one. After some searching we did find some Genius bread on a top shelf in a Monoprix, plus some Kent & Fraser gf biscuits, a gf pasta and Sojade soya yogurts – and over in the Marais we found this delightful little shop, EatGlutenFree at 5 Rue Caron.
The only other success in freefrom eating terms was Laouz in the Rue St Honoré – a Moroccan patisserie with a good range of utterly delicious looking gluten and milk free sweeties….
Why was I in Paris? Well, thanks to the success of the new Freefrom Food Awards in Ireland and in Germany we are looking for possible partners for ventures elsewhere in Europe. Spain and Italy are both possibilities but my good friend the Iraqi artist, Khulood Da’mi had suggested a few days in Paris, so I thought I would start by checking out whether the tales of poor freefrom provision in France were really true. (And yes, it would appear that they are……)
So, while I dragged her around eateries and supermarkets, she trailed me around art galleries (I mean the small commercial ones, of which there are positively hundreds) shops – and on a visit to the Hammurabi stele in the Louvre.
If you have never heard of Hammurabi, nor had I, but he was a pretty impressive guy. He was King of Babylon around 1700 BC and here he is receiving the text of the laws (which are inscribed around the stele) from Shamash, the Sun God and god of justice. The back basalt stele is around 8 foot high and the tiny cuneiform inscriptions detail over 300, occasionally somewhat bizarre, but mainly very reasonable laws which governed the three classes of Babylonian society, property owners, freed men, and slaves:
#1: If a man accuses another man of murder but cannot bring any proof against him, the accuser shall be put to death.
#193: If an adopted child identifies its natural parents and rejects the parents who have brought it up in favour of its natural parents, it will lose an eye.
#196 & 200: If someone puts out the eye of a free man, he shall have his eye put out….. If someone breaks the tooth of a freeman he shall have his tooth broken.
Amongst many other bits of social organisation, the code details what a doctor should be paid for operating on a property owner, a freeman and a slave (10, 5 and 2 pieces of silver respectively), what wages should be paid to an ox driver or how to establish a builder’s liability if a house collapses. And this provision, whose number I do not know but did not want to leave out as it illustrates the basic fairness of the code :
# If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year.
And, amazingly, given the size of the stele, there is still space for a prologue about the investiture of the king and a lyrical epilogue looking back on his work in establishing the code.
(If you want to know slightly more about Hammurabi or his laws try this article in Live Science.)
After many Louvre visits spent fighting my way through the crowds around the Mona Lisa, it was real pleasure to visit the King in his peaceful gallery.
As for shopping? Mainly we window shopped and when the displays are this appealing…..
…or this gloriously impractical……
…. or you find a plant market tucked just behind Notre Dame…..
….who would want to do anything else?
What a great article thank you. Yes we’ve always found it a struggle eating “free from” as I’m gluten free and my other half is dairy free. We ended up in the Jewish quarter where we found “free from” options and a bakery selling dairy free goods. I remember my husband saying with incredulity “You mean there’s no dairy in anything?” It’s equally difficult for vegetarians I believe – or so I’ve been told.
Thank you for a very interesting article.
I like the way that you include various off-topic items for readers to serendipitously learn about.
> ‘Non’ was the standard reply when asked if any of their dishes were gluten free or milk/dairy free, followed by a grudging offering of a salad.
Could you write something about how you asked the questions please? For example, was the ‘Non’ a response to the question itself or just an indication that people just did not understand anything whatsoever about your question or about why you would ask such a question? Was there any awareness that gluten can be a problem for some people?
I remember seeing somewhere an advertisement for some cards that have sentences about gluten-free food printed in five languages, the idea being that, say, someone from England visiting France could select a card by looking at the English localization of the sentence then show the card in France to a person whose language is French, where the French localization of the sentence would be read. Thus assisting communication through the language barrier.
Did you use that technique to ask the questions please?
I find a resonance with what you found in Paris with my own problems here in the United Kingdom. My diet is gluten-free vegan and I also avoid spicy food and there are a few other issues. Have you ever tried to find a gluten-free vegan ready-meal? I have found one and it was a spicy thing. I looked at the website of one restaurant and there was a search facility and it actually allowed for selecting both gluten-free and vegan in the same search, and the result was just a glass of fizzy drink, no ,meals at all.
I applied those experiences when writing Chapter 22 of my novel.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_novel_chapter_022_version_2.pdf
Also, in another chapter there is featured a fictional virtual visit to Paris that addresses the issue of communicating through the language barrier, though not in relation to food.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_novel_chapter_017.pdf
I am publishing each chapter of the novel after I write it. Food features as a secondary storyline. Here is a link
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/locse_novel.htm
Returning to food issues. There seems often to be a great lack of interest in addressing any issue that involves more than one thing simultaneously. Yet making ready-meals for my diet would not be a problem, it is mostly a matter of what to leave out rather than any special ingredients and the ready-meals produced would be suitable for lots of people not just people with my diet. To me it just seems to be a lack of willingness to do anything about it. So the problem persists. I wonder how many people have special dietary needs for which ready-meals are not available. Are there lots of people who have such problems.
Is it like the old joke about a shopkeeper telling a customer that he does not stock a certain item because there is no demand for it round here …. he keeps telling people there is no demand for it round here …. he has told fifty-five people this week!
Are there readers of this blog and of the Foodsmatter website who have special diets involving more than one issue and who would welcome a survey to find out how big is the problem?
I appreciate that it is unlikely that a single ready-meal could be designed that everyone could eat as there are mutually-contradictory needs such as low fibre and high fibre, yet maybe a range of ready-meals could be designed so that many people with special diets could have a choice of ready-meals available.
William Overington
Monday 17 April 2017
Just to reply to your first question…. I asked the wait-person, in French, in each case, whether they had anything to offer me that was gluten free and/or dairy free. To which the answer was ‘non’. Yes – translation cards certainly do exist but I did not use one; this was not a language but an availability problem.