Foodie Challenge Featured Winner: French Street Food

ByRachael Dunlap
January 07, 2009
3 min read

We have another Foodie Challenge photo contest winner for you to savor!

This one, taken by Sarah Smith, comes to us all the way from Paris, France. She snagged some delicious street food while wandering through the Marais neighborhood’s annual Christmas flea market.

Get all the juicy details after the jump…

About the photo:

While I was wandering around the stalls in the Marche de Noel (which went on and on – I covered about half of them in about 2 hours), I happened upon a street corner populated entirely by vendors of roasted sausage sandwiches. The sausages – Andouille, Morteau, or Merguez – were all roasting in giant pans, fanned around the circumference while thin slices of onions sizzled and caramelized in the center.

Baskets of demi-baguettes sat to one side and were carefully torn by hand then slathered with spicy mustard. The sausage split and laid in the middle, and a pile of caramelized onions arranged over it, and a few slices of roasted tomato. The whole affair was wrapped in a piece of white paper and passed to customers, who were stacked up in lines waiting to get a sandwich.

One couple paused, and the husband was so clearly lusting after a sausage sandwich, but his wife was wild to look at the stalls. ‘MAIS J’AI FAIM MOI!’, he wailed like a child. (I have hunger, me!) She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him off. Poor guy. They were really good.

I took my sandwich around the corner and sat on a park bench. The bread wasn’t that good, so I took off one glove and started eating the onions and sausage with my fingers. I was relishing every bite of a slice of sausage when a charming white-haired Frenchman walked by my bench, looked at me (I imagine I gave him a somewhat guilty look, as I felt very much the inelegant glutton), and he grinned widely and said “Bon appetit, mademoiselle!” and then tipped his hat at me and went on his merry way.

Sometimes I really love the French. Actually, pretty often I love the French. I live in such a marvelously friendly neighborhood: the third arrondissement is said by many to be the best neighborhood in which to live in Paris. I agree.”

Stayed tuned for more stories and photos from our Foodie Challenge Winners.

Photo via arcanamundi‘s photostream on flickr.

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