Paris by Mouth favorite tours

My favorite food experience was the market tour and cooking class that I took with Cook’n with Class. You go shopping with the chef for the ingredients for a dinner you will cook, stopping at a fromagerie, boulangerie, green grocer, butcher, fish shop, etc. I learned the most during this class. I have taken about half a dozen cooking classes with them in Paris as well as their week long class in Uzes and all were excellent.

I took one of the food tours with Paris by Mouth (maybe 10 years ago). It was fine, but I did not think the guide for our tour was very knowledgeable (she was a young American who had not lived in Paris long) so I was disappointed. Maybe that was an exception, as many others have raved about their tours.

I haven’t done any of their tours but I do pay attention to their restaurant suggestions.

The LA Times restaurant critic just wrote about his 2 week visit to Paris. He relied on folks like Lindsay Tramuta and David Lebovitz for restaurant ideas and he also very much enjoyed the cheese tour with Paris By Mouth and Jennifer. She is chezlouloufrance on Instagram and you can book directly with her too.

Really enjoyed Paris By Mouth's North Marais tour last spring; a group of seven participants led through the 3rd arrondissement by an accomplished 'foodie' and former Paris restaurant owner, Mathieu. Following the tour, he emailed everyone a list of places which were visited and a recap of various wines and cheeses (and chocolate!), so here's a LONG response to provide a detailed glimpse of what your tour might* include should you decide to take one [no guarantee if itinerary or guide or opening hours may change for a future date or season, this is just what we experienced in May 2024 to give you an idea of comparable scope/scale]. The short answer is YES, it was worth every penny, er franc.

• Group met at Café de la Poste at 10:30am (meeting spot confirmed by PbM about a week before our tour date).

• Walked a couple blocks to our first stop at Tout Autour du Pain, a boulangerie which has won the city's annual competition for best baguettes numerous times. There is a park catty-corner from the shop, where we took a 'bag' of that morning's bread (four or five full baguettes) to sample while learning about the different types and how a baguette should 'sing' when you twist it to break off a piece.

• Two or three blocks away we stopped into Jacques Genin chocolate shop. Mathieu (pre)arranged to have the owner meet with us to describe the process and answer questions, all the while we enjoyed incredible ginger chocolate, timut chocolate, pâtes de fruits mango/passion, and caramel. This store resembles a high-end jewelry store, with prices to match. The French take their chocolates VERY seriously.

• A walk across the district's City Hall, where we learned that the bumps protruding thru the street were remnants of an underground prison which existed there in the late-1700's. Another couple of blocks and we were on rue de Bretagne, heading into a butcher hall, mid-street, with several proprietors exhibiting their specialties. The smells emanating from here (herbs, spices and meats) were incredible, like having 7-8 French Restaurant kitchens all blending together into one. We sampled rosette, and pâte au poivre vert, as we happily stumbled along the different stations.

• Just up the street (rue de Bretagne), we then entered Jouannault cheese shop, a fromagerie with SO many cheeses to choose from. Luckily for us, our guide knew exactly which ones were sought after and seasonal/special, to go with our collected cache of baguettes, chocolate, meats and spreads. It was now time for some Wine ... we would take these cheeses and the rest to a nearby wine merchant.

• A block or two up from the fromagerie is Arthus et Jean. Their wine shop has a separate sitting area in the back, which served as our 'picnic' venue in pairing several wines with the day's goodies. We started with Champagne, then a Burgundy (Bourgogne), finally finishing with a Beaujolais. And we were finished! :) Couldn't tell you which cheese we had with which wine, but our guide perfectly matched each glass with each cheese accompaniment... they included Valencay AOP (a goat cheese from Loire Valley); Comté AOP [a sweet, butter-like cheese]; a cow cheese from Normandy called Brillat-Savarin; a sheep cheese called Brin d'amour; and Fourme d'Ambert AOP, one of the oldest known cheeses in France.

We would absolutely do another Paris By Mouth tour. Hope this helps!

We took the Paris by Mouth South Marais tour in the fall of 2023 and loved it.

My notes aren't as detailed as they might be, but we did have a variety of foods. The guide had been a cook in several restaurants and was very knowledgable about food.

I do remember the last two stops: We went to a cheese shop and got several kinds of cheese. Then we went to a wine shop, which had a table at the back waiting for us. We discussed what wine to get with the owner, then shared two bottles of wine while we sampled the cheese. At the end, the owner threw in another bottle of wine and we ended up sitting and talking with the owner and the guide; the tour ended almost an hour later than it was supposed to because we were having such a good time.

It was well worth every €.

Very highly recommended.

Kevin

I have done the North Marais tour. I’ve also done the cheese explosion in the wine tasting.

I loved all of them, but I absolutely adore the cheese explosion. . I’ve taken it twice. The woman who does it, Jennifer, is just excellent and the cheese is outstanding. The wine is not bad either. By the way, there was one cheese repeat in the two tours in the amount of cheese you get is substantial. I might need to book that again for our visit next year.