Going to Paris? Drop in at Rungis
ONE OF EUROPE’S BEST-KEPT SECRETS, RUNGIS, WORLD’S LARGEST WHOLESALE FOOD MARKET, IS A GLOBAL ROLE MODEL
Around midnight, as most Parisians head to sleep after a long day at work, a parallel universe rouses to life inside a giant food market — slightly larger than the size of Monaco — 8km south of the French capital.
In a refrigerated hall the length of a soccer field, Pascal DuFays wiped a layer of crushed ice off the silvery flank of a Saint-Pierre fish and pointed to its eyes. They were perfectly clear — a sign of freshness.
“See that beauty?” said DuFays, his breath forming clouds in the glacial air. “It was caught this morning in Brittany, by independent fishermen in small boats.”
A buyer from a swanky Parisian restaurant came by to inspect the fish, haggle over the price and secure delivery in time for a well-heeled lunch crowd later that day.
Throughout the early morning, thousands of similar deals were unfolding inside more than 30 hulking meat, fruit, vegetable, dairy and flower pavilions nearby.
By the time the sun peeked over the Paris skyline, throngs of workers had consumed nearly 3,000 coffees at Le Saint Hubert cafe, a local hangout, squeezed elbow-to-elbow at the horseshoe bar.
“This is a working-class place,” said Pascal Rolland, 56, a butcher. “There’s no one here who doesn’t work hard.”
It was just a typical morning scene at one of Europe’s best-kept secrets: Rungis, the world’s largest wholesale food market.
Revered in culinary circles, Rungis is barely known to most visitors to the French capital. But many have heard of its fabled predecessor, Les Halles, the sprawling, cacophonous, rat-infested food market that fed Paris for over 800 years, and was immortalised in Emile Zola’s novel The Belly of Paris.
Today, Rungis is an ultramodern market, generating 9 billion euros in annual sales
(about Dh38.19 billion; $10.4 billion). With pavilions divided among the four major food groups, a system for recycling biowaste and a global platform for e-commerce, the operation is so efficient that many world capitals are recasting their food markets on the Rungis model.
‘People want to be treated like humans’
Most important, she added, gesturing to longtime flower sellers, “we have a relationship with the people here.”
Francis Fauchere, 58, president of Eurodis Viande, is a meat wholesaler who employs 40 people. He grew up in a poor family, he said, and hires people from similar straits — many from the gritty banlieues ringing Paris, where unemployment is as high as 40 per cent.
“If you’re willing to work hard, you’ll find a job,” he said.
Antoine D’Agostino, 82, began working at age 12 in the teeming food pavilions in Les Halles, hauling produce in wooden carts. “I never had time to go to school,” he said. “But I knew how to count.” D’Agostino, a celebrity at the market, offered memories of his early days. At Les Halles, he said, you had to sell produce fast because there was no refrigeration. He wheeled his cart from one store to another, hustling carrots or lettuce until everything was sold.
Still, with e-commerce, “there’s no one who says hello or even thank you,” he observed. “People want to be treated like humans,” he added. “The market is where that happens.”