…to make customers feel good and open their wallets. That’s what they really understand perfectly at La Grande Epicerie on the left bank of the Seine river next to Bon Marché: to stage food, and to let even simple staples look like precious goods or even art. The Epicerie is kind of a Parisian brother of  Harrod’s in London or KaDeWe in Berlin, a highly over-priced food store in the end, yet a very beautiful one. I’m sure they have lighting technicians on their pay-roll and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were working with psychologists as well. All food here – it may come in glasses or cans, it may be deep-frozen, precooked, processed or pure – has an aura of authentic fare, as if coming directly from a farm, from a meadow, from the sea. Don’t know how they do it; but they’re doing it pretty well.

Is it art? Or just eggs? Hard to say at La Grande Epicerie.