Sweetness and light (and maki)

    For once the grey shroud had lifted. The sky was a piercing blue that, unlike its colour-absorbant predecessor, reflected the sharp winter light onto every surface. Paris looked beautiful. The normally drab and imposing Haussmann buildings looked like they had been given a seasonal re-spray.The spires of Notre Dame glistened as we jogged along the banks of the suddenly shimmering Seine.
    This is my favourite weather and I joyfully gulped down gallons of the searingly fresh air and thought about what the day ahead might bring. My friend Elodie had suggested visiting a very special market in the 3rd arrondissement and we agreed to meet there for brunch. She'd posted an article on it on my Facebook page to whet my appetite, but reality, as we all know, has a habit of surprising us.
    Le Marché des Enfants Rouges, dating back to the early 17th Century, originally took its name from the inhabitants of a then abandoned orphanage who used to wear a uniform of bright red. There was nothing bright nor special about the creaking iron gates that marked the market's entrance on rue de Bretagne and if I'd been on my own I would have walked straight past it.
   Upon entering we weaved our way through a labyrinthine collection of the usual market stalls selling the usual fare: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, cous-cous. Wait a minute, cous-cous? Making up the rear section of the market is a sensory confection of food stalls. There were mounds of fragrant spiced Moroccan specialities, served on clay tagines and unctious cassoulets and confits from the south. On one side of an aisle an Italian waiter sung orders for five more rissotto de cèpes, while on the other a character straight out a manga cartoon was dishing up variety boxes of bento. Behind that the air was filled with the sounds of sizzling, spicy acras from Martinique.

   We plumped for the Japanese and sat in a corrugated plastic greenhouse, warmed by induction heaters, sipping life-giving, smokey thé grillé trying to pry the last grain of soy-soaked rice out of our trays with our chopsticks (luckily they also supplied forks!) After the grating grind of the working week, this was a gloriously disorganised time-out that was, at 4 o'clock, still doing a roaring (no doubt hangover-inspired) trade as we wandered back, sated, into the world outside.

    We weren't done with the 3rd yet though, as we had to go back past rue Debelleyme and "Popelini", a purveyor of petits choux. I guess we'd call them 'mini eclairs', but size was the only thing small about these cluster bombs of flavour, whose glutinous fillings included luscious raspberry and rose, creamy vanilla (you could feel the seeds!) and a dark chocolate that was so bitter it needed counselling. www.popelini.com

(photo courtesy of Elodie Salares) 

     As befits the randomness that is a parisian weekend, we ended up sharing these (inexpertly halving them with a coffee spoon on an unused saucer) at the "Rush Bar" (32 Rue Saint-Sébastien), a Liverpool Football Club supporters' pub around the corner from Elodie's flat. There was no doubting that that Sunday's combination   of sunshine, sushi and sweetness was a hat-trick of the quality that even the eponymous Ian would have struggled to surpass.