PA R I S I A N WA L K WAY S ❘ R U E S A I N T E - A N N E
RUE SAINTE-ANNE Just west of the Palais Royal, stretching northwards from the 1st arrondissement into the 2nd, Jeffrey T Iverson discovers a street where globalisation has a positively benign face…
ACE BOUCHERIE
BOTTLES
ÉPICES ROELLINGER
58 rue Sainte-Anne Tel. +33 1 42 96 68 09
57 rue Sainte-Anne Tel. +33 1 42 61 93 90
51 bis rue Sainte-Anne Tel. +33 1 42 60 46 88
Ace Boucherie was created to provide high-quality meat to the clientele of the Korean market across the street.Their Wagyu and Angus beef is top grade, like their marinated meats and special thin cuts for Korean barbecue and Japanese cuisine. But the queue running down the street at lunchtime is for their deli, offering homemade take-away dishes from seasonal produce.
Benoît Dechelette opened his wine bar to show why his native Lyon is France’s gastronomic capital: it’s bordered on all sides by regions rich with unique terroirs – Beaujolais, Burgundy, Savoie, Rhône – all yielding an abundance of distinctive wines and products.Wines from ancient estates and biodynamic trailblazers are paired with farmfresh charcuterie, cheese and other delicacies.
This spice shop is the result of decades of research and travel by the chef Olivier Roellinger, who studied the history of the spice trade that once flourished in the port city of Saint-Malo to create a revolutionary French cuisine infused with flavours of the world. Discover Roellinger’s selection of rare peppers, grand cru vanillas, and signature, ready-to-use spice blends.
C
ritics such as the historian Andrew Hussey, author of Paris, A Secret History, have been railing since the turn of the 21st century against what has been called the muséification (museumification) of Paris, as the historic centre of the capital keeps losing residents and small businesses to rising rents, and entire districts are invaded by big brands and tourist shops. But not every street in the heart of Paris has necessarily lost its sense of history and identity. Just west of Palais Royal is one that seems to have always been inhabited by people slightly ahead of their time and which today has in many ways become a symbol of the most delicious, diversifying effects of globalisation: rue Sainte-Anne. “It’s a street which people have come to love because it offers the chance to travel in so many ways,” says Sandrine Donvale, manager of the transporting spice shop at No. 51 bis, Épices Roellinger. “Through the aromas of spices, the flavours of cuisines, but also in the pages of books and through objects imported from around the world, rue Sainte-Anne is a place for 54 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Feb/Mar 2019
Olivier Roellinger, chef and proprietor of Épices Roellinger, a shop that epitomises the flavour of rue Saint-Anne
voyages of the senses of every kind.” Situated in the 1st and 2nd arrondissements between avenue de l’Opéra and rue Saint-Augustin, this ancient street, first referred to by the name Sainte-Anne in 1633, has been home to many men and women who marked their centuries. From the unscrupulous Comte Jean-Baptiste du Barry at 34 rue Sainte-Anne, who sought influence by making his lover Jeanne Bécu the mistress of Louis XV, to the poet Charles Baudelaire, who lived for part of 1854 at No. 61 in the Hôtel d’York – today named Hôtel Baudelaire. It was even here at, No. 53, that in 1822 the merchant Louis Nicolas revolutionised the wine trade by opening the first shop selling wine by the bottle instead of by the barrel. But it was in the 20th century that the street truly gained a reputation as a bastion of the avant-garde, and a bellwether of France’s evolving society. In 1932, the French singer and cabaret star Suzy Solidor chose 12 rue Sainte-Anne to open La Vie Parisienne, perhaps the first nightclub owned by a woman in Paris. Openly lesbian, Solidor was known as ‘the most painted woman in the world’, having sat for some 225 artists from Tamara de Lempicka and Francis Bacon to Jean