shops for cooking geeks

My friend K has lived in Paris for more than 12 years now, and had a few suggestions for me and my culinary adventure.  There are a slew of cooking-related shops near Les Halles, the site where Paris' central market stood for more than 800 years.  Although the market was closed down in 1969, many of the culinary shops are still there.

Among these is the famous E. Dehillerin.  Several online reviews had me a little nervous about going there - people said that they're not very friendly there.  The minute I walked in the door, however, I was greeted by an extremely enthusiastic man who introduced himself as Kim, and before I could say two sentences, he started trying to guess where I was from.  (I like to think it's because of my shoes, and not because of my pronunciation that set off the 'American in the shop' alarm, otherwise my feelings would be hurt).   "Los Angeles?  St. Louis?  But your French is really good..." aaahh, there's the compliment. "...Hmmm, might you be a French teacher?  Austin?  Boston?"  He suggested I go downstairs and check things out, and I said that when I came back up, I'd tell him where I'm from.

This place is dusty and things are piled high and more are hanging from the ceiling.  In short, it's cool.  If only I knew enough to know what I need!  Back upstairs, Kim started guessing again.  I tried to give him a hint by saying, "Think of a pan..." and he guessed Utah.  Finally, I set him straight.  And then, he wanted to talk about films, specifically ones with "American" in the title.  American Pie II (he liked it better than the first one).  American Beauty.  Which started him in on Kevin Spacey.  By this time, another employee joined in on the conversation.  Needless to say, this was not at all what I was expecting, but it certainly helped put me at ease.

Next, I found the Librairie Gourmande, a bookshop entirely dedicated to cooking.  They had books on every sort of cuisine, as well as culinary dictionaries.  I found a couple of useful ones that would help me translate some of the fancy French phrases into English, but when I got to the register I realized that they were about three times more than I thought.  The cashier agreed that they were really expensive.  I put them back, and think I'll wait until the end of my stay to see if I have any money left in my budget.  I did get a cool culinary dictionary, in French.

More wanderings and I found A. Simon, La Bovida, and G. Detou, a shop that when pronounced sounds like "J'ai de tout," or "I have everything."  I have to admit the shop was smaller than I'd expected, because "everything" would surely take up a lot of space.  But they do have a lot of things from around the world. 

A bit overwhelmed with choices, thus returning to D & K's this afternoon relatively empty-handed, I decided that today was really just a reconnaissance mission.  After I complete my cooking classes, I'm hoping to have a better idea of what items I will need to equip my own kitchen back home.