Saturday market is tres yum

RENNES, FRANCE — The pall of fluorescent lighting. Cold, stale air wafting from frozen fish sticks. The soda aisle. This is Saturday-morning shopping at a typical grocery store in America.

Fragrant freshly brewed coffee and pleasant accordion style music. Vibrant flower bouquets. Hard-shelled oysters sold next to chocolate crepes. This is Saturday-morning shopping at a typical farmer’s market in France.

Every weekend, farmers throughout France bring their products downtown to customers and tourists who prefer buying local products at a cheaper price, who enjoy the plaza atmosphere, and who want to preserve this tradition. In Rennes, in the Brittany region of northwest France, the plaza is Place des Lices.

“I come here mostly because I can find regional products that I know are grown here and are organic,” said Jean Marc Kerverdo, a Rennes resident who has shopped at this market for nine years. He said he prefers buying his food grown closer to home.

Les Lices, considered the second-biggest market in France, according to the Rennes Tourist Web site, assembles regional farmers who bring fruits — such as petit gris melons and Reinette apples — to vegetables — like carrots and peppers — to cheeses called comté, morbier and raclette. They also bring very regional offerings in the way of seafood, salted butter, cider and galettes, or thin buckwheat flour pancakes.

“The customer can buy the same products they find at [supermarkets] here. It’s cheaper for them and better for us,” said farmer Chantel Simonneausc, who has sold organic products in the Lices for 25 years. “We sell our products to them directly, and they obtain quality products at a reasonable price.”

Marie Claude Kerverdo said quality and price lure her to the market with her husband every weekend.

“The products here are always fresh and good, and if I think about it, they are cheaper, as well,” she said, adding: “I come here for the most part out of pleasure. The market’s experience, it’s enjoyable.”

A lively atmosphere and this market’s reputation as one of the best in France, draws families and visitors, said Gaetan Gicquel, a fish vendor in the Lices for 22 years.

Gicquel explained that the market allows him to interact with customers he would normally never see. They can talk about his products, when they were harvested, and how best to prepare them, which would be unlikely at a super marché, or super market.

“We have very loyal and very good customers,” Simonneausc said. “Thanks to them, we are still farmers.”

Still, some younger customers prefer the supermarket for its convenience and efficiency.

“I buy my groceries at the supermarket," said Rennes resident Christophe Seuilre. "It is more comfortable, I can go when I want, it doesn’t matter the hour."

The farmer’s market "is only here Saturday mornings, and I sleep then.”

But more and more, regular customers go to the market because of tradition.

Kerverdo, who has frequented the market since he was young, returns with his wife and, sometimes, his daughter. He added that at the market, he sometimes makes a new acquaintance.

Marc Vitel, a market regular, echoes Kerverdo that the market is a tradition for the people in Rennes.

He goes every Saturday to buy products to prepare typical local dishes — such as potée aux choux (cabbage hot pot) — and after has a coffee with friends and talks about what they have bought.

“We have a drink together," he said. "And that is something that we cannot do at the supermarket.”

This report comes from a journalist in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents while they study abroad.