Small French Pleasures

Thoughtful foods, beautiful objects and everyday rituals to enjoy in Paris and beyond.

Small French pleasures are the foods, objects, and everyday rituals that make a visit to Paris more enjoyable and everyday life a little more beautiful afterward. Some are meant to be enjoyed fresh in the city, others can be brought home as lasting reminders of France. Each is chosen for its craftsmanship or sense of place.

Sliced artisan sourdough bread beside a bread knife
Sliced artisan sourdough bread beside a bread knife

To enjoy in Paris

Comté cheese with rustic French bread

Comté

One of France’s great cheeses, its character changes with the season and the length of aging. Summer cheeses, made from milk produced while cows graze on fresh pasture, are often more golden and fruit-forward. Winter Comtés, made when the cows are fed hay, tend to be paler, with more pronounced nutty or vegetal notes. Simply enjoy it with bread and honey.

Paris-Brest pastry topped with hazelnuts and praline cream

Paris-Brest

Paris-Brest is one of the great classics of French pâtisserie, balancing light, crisp choux pastry with a delicate hazelnut praline cream.

For the table and home

French jam spread on a slice of rustic bread

Clementine jam

Made with clementines from Corsica, the Mediterranean island in southern France known as the Île de Beauté, the jam is usually cooked in a cauldron to preserve the fruit’s zesty flavor. Delicious on a slice of bread or spooned over warm crêpes.

Honey drizzled over a slice of rustic French bread

French honey

Choose between chestnut, pine, summer flowers and acacia honey, each bringing a different balance of sweetness, depth and fragrance. The best honeys come from a single beekeeper and a single landscape, rather than an anonymous blend. Spread it on bread, serve it with Comté or stir it into an infusion.

Stack of blue-striped French linen kitchen towels

Tea towels by Charvet

Made in Armentières, a northern French town with a long textile tradition, Charvet’s linen and cotton-linen cloths are robust, absorbent and made for daily use.

Stack of handmade green ceramic plates

Ceramics by Jars

Since 1857, Jars has been making ceramics in a small village in the Drôme, where the guiding idea remains simple: make useful things beautiful. Each piece is shaped from stoneware and finished with glazes developed in the company’s own workshops, allowing the colors and textures to settle in their own unpredictable way. No two pieces are exactly alike.

French soap bar hanging in a shop

Savon de Marseille

A soap should do more than look good by the basin. Made in the South of France, this olive-oil-based bar is cooked in a cauldron for five to ten days using the traditional Marseille method. Fragrance-free, color-free and made with ingredients of natural origin, it is gentle, practical and pleasingly versatile.

The pleasures continue in the streets of Paris.

Discover Paris through food, local shops,
and a slower pace.

Discover the experience