A tantalizing tour

I am browsing at Barthelemy, a tiny store on Rue de Grenelle -- you know, in the 7th arrondissement -- where in-season cheeses are stacked high in tempting wedges on a wooden counter; heart-shaped Brie and little goat cheeses on sticks are close at hand. Wine and confiture and chocolate line the shelves. The best part? I got here for only $40.

This isn’t the real Paris, of course, which, sadly, is out of reach this year with the dollar doing so poorly and air fares hardly a deal. If you must have a perfect macaroon, this is a good time to visit Boule in West Hollywood. Leave Laduree for next year.

But do eat your cookies while turning the pages of “Gourmet Shops of Paris: An Epicurean Tour” (Flammarion). The sameness of staying home is mitigated somewhat by Christian Sarramon’s photos, which don’t doll things up too much and are content to let the dim light on a table d’hote restaurant speak softly of its own Old World charms.

But he isn’t shy about getting up close either. On another page, plump black roe is speaking directly to me from an overflowing tin in Petrossian’s trademark color, a gorgeous dusk blue.

Sarramon is a magazine photographer, and his pictures capture what is uniquely alluring about Parisian food culture: the floor tile, the bronze lettering on the window, the handwriting on the chalkboard announcing what’s fresh today. Shops in L.A. may try to imitate the look, but they never get it exactly right, even if they import material from Paris. (Figaro Cafe on Vermont Avenue looks like the real thing, but one spoonful of its onion soup reminds you which side of the ocean you’re on).

We’re just too young a city to achieve that otherworldly glow, the one that comes from the accretion of connoisseurship that seems to permeate most Parisian shops.

In that city, even a relatively new boutique such as Mariage Freres tea shop (opened in 1985), is so convincingly and lovingly modeled on a 19th century space that only an informed shopper would know the difference.

Author Pierre Rival, a magazine and newspaper writer, introduces us to the main players on the Paris food scene today, from stalwarts such as the Poilanes, who’ve been baking round loafs in a wood-fired oven since 1932, and upstarts such as Alain Cojean and Frederic Maquair, who, in 2001, came up with a version of fast-food that is acceptable to the French people over 20: cellophane-wrapped sandwiches made daily with fresh herbs and lettuces. Another first: a store called Pomze on Boulevard Haussmann sells only apples and apple byproducts. One can imagine the happy smell of the bushels of the fruit in all of their green, yellow and reddish glory.

At times, though, Rival’s prose sounds like unsigned magazine copy, the kind writers produce when they have to, whether they’ve thought about the subject or not. We learn that, for instance, the choice of bread in Paris “has multiplied beyond belief.” Too often the answer to why a shop offers great chocolate or sandwiches is “the quality of the raw ingredients.”

Rival, however, does supply pithy snapshots of what makes Paris Paris. Shoppers at the Delicabar, a kind of health-conscious snack cafe in the department store Le Bon Marche, wear carry-out satchels across the shoulder “so as to avoid unsightly bags drooping from each arm -- such details matter in the world of fashion.” Just imagine how much nicer Los Angeles would be if shoppers emerged from Ralphs looking more chic.

While not comprehensive, a six-page “Gourmet’s Notebook” in the back of the book contains helpful essentials on the shops Rival has focused on. It would be great to photocopy so you don’t have to lug around a 160-page hardback. I’m hanging on to it till the day the dollar’s back up and I’m stopping at Delicabar after buying a dress at Le Bon Marche. It has to happen, n’est-ce pas? Right? Right?