Gorgeous Goodies, Edible and Otherwise

After spending quite a long time today trying unsuccessfully to get tickets to sold-out events and find reasonably priced winter coats, we met a friend near Madeleine for a drink.  Dark falls early now and we suddenly realized there was a full moon above us, our third since arriving in Paris.  Covered by a thin layer of cloud, it shone hazily against the columns of the church.

The area around la Madeleine is thick with high end food emporia, including Fauchon, Hediard, Maison de la Truffe and Caviar Kaspia.  We trailed around looking in windows and stepping into stores populated with more salespeople than customers.  The Christmas selling season is just gearing up and staff are hanging decorations.  Caviar is big this time of year and there's plenty of it.

Fauchon will sell you any size tin of any kind of caviar, Iranian, Russian, wild, farmed, you name it and it's yours.   They've got a lot of competition though.

  

Prunier is new to the neighborhood, having moved in boldly right next to Caviar Kaspia, which has retaliated by bringing sturgeon from Russia to swim guard duty in the tank holding their expensive eggs.

Should caviar not be your desire, you can select from several varieties of smoked salmon: Scottish, Norwegian, wild, farmed, marinated in exotic spices, plain, etc.

Or maybe crab; not the ordinary kind you can find anywhere, but enormously long-legged varietues from the Kamchatka peninsula.  Only, let's see, how many Euros per leg?  Thirty-six?  A bargain!

 

Oh, you're not very hungry?  But you've got a sweet tooth, right?

 

 

Candied whole fruits?  Pâte de fruits ? There's a 50 persent off sale on chocolate at Marquise de Sevigne.

By the time we  walked around the square for the second time we were hungry and wondered what fabulous, luxurious deliciousness we'd have for dinner. 

A sudden great idea had us on the line 14 métro, the fancy new entirely automated one, where we rode only one stop to our destination: rue Sainte-Anne, a street with virtually nothing on it but Japanese noodle shops.  Where we had this

And this:

Great and filling, along with some gyoza and a plate of kimchee (they mix their cuisines a bit, so what?).

We walked home through the Louvre courtyard, where that fat moon was still hanging above us, lighting the way.