Shivering and shopping at Picard (thanks, David Sedaris!)

A few days ago, Randy sent me a link to a funny David Sedaris segment on This American Life, in which he tells Ira Glass that he continually tries to avoid humiliation in Paris by only patronizing shops that have been kind to him in the past, or where he already understands how the system works.

Picard, a massive grocery chain that sells only frozen food, is Sedaris-approved. Since my French is really wretched and I’m still a bit on the skittish side myself when it comes to interactions that have the potential to become conversationally complicated (basically, any interaction with anyone at all), I appreciated Ira Glass’s description of Picard as a very clearly-marked store where the shopping was easy and straightforward. Plus, it just sounded too weird to pass up.

I checked out Picard.com and found that there was a branch just down the street from my apartment. Pretty much everything seems to be just down the street from my apartment, which is quite nice. The sign outside is stamped with a snowflake and says “Picard – Surgelés”. Had I not been alerted to the existence of Picard in advance, I probably would have assumed it was a surgical supply store. That’s just how great my French is. I ventured in, shyly murmuring “Bonjour” to the security guard, and grabbed a basket.

Imagine a cross between Trader Joe’s and an operating room, and you can come close to the experience of shopping at Picard. They sell the same kinds of ready-made, pseudo-gourmet foods that you might find at TJ’s, but without any of the folksy handwritten signs or colorful chalkboards. Instead, Picard resembles someone's vision of the future – all cold and white and silver, an empty expanse of a room filled with nothing more than row upon row of waist-high, top-loading freezers with plain white signs stating their contents. It was eerie.

The foods were a mix of Picard-brand and private-label items. Everything there is flash-frozen, a technology apparently invented by the American Clarence Birdseye in the ‘20s, but raised to the level of an art form by Les Établissements Picard in the 1960’s.

I’m not sure how much we use flash-freezing in the U.S. I know the chicken breasts I buy at Trader Joe’s are treated this way and thus defrost very quickly, but I don’t know how pervasive this process is. Either we don’t use it to the same extent that Picard does, or else we just choose not to freeze the same sorts of items.

At Picard, you can buy tiny boxes of frozen herbs. You can get every kind of fish imaginable, including cases of prawns that have tidily arranged in neat rows, feelers and eyes suspended in icy immobility. You can buy tiny cups layered with chocolate ice cream and chantilly, apple tarts, cassis sorbet. Pork chops, rack of lamb, cream of carrot soup, haricots verts in many sizes, gourmet pizzas. Prepared foods come in every shape and size; I picked up a bag of “New Orleans”-flavored chicken drummettes. The potato section was robust, and the choices put Ore-Ida to shame. My eyes locked upon a bag of sliced potatoes "confites dans la graisse de canard”. My French is poor, but I can recognize duck fat when I see it. Into my cart they went, along with a Flammekueche, or Alsatian bacon tart.



The verdict? The prepared foods of Picard are easy to cook, reasonably priced and so far, pretty tasty. My chicken bits (what the hell am I doing eating drummettes in Paris?) were sweet and rich, and didn’t dare rely upon any processed parts the way they might in the States. The potatoes were indulgent and seasoned nicely, and there was enough graisse de canard remaining in the pan afterwards for a few dips of the baguette.


Certainly Picard is not the type of place I imagined myself patronizing while living in Paris, but in a pinch it seems like an easy way to pick up some ready-made meals. And it’s fun sometimes to feel like you’re in the space-age future, n’est-ce pas?