Eating the Marais: Falafel, Poppyseed, and the Two Jewish Traditions That Share One Street

The Rue des Rosiers is the heart of the Pletzl, Yiddish for "little square," the historic Jewish quarter of the Marais that the Marais stratified tour walks through. The single fastest way to read that history is to eat down the street, because the food is stacked in exactly the same layers the neighborhood is. Here is what you are tasting and why it is here.

Two waves, two cuisines

The Jewish Marais is not one tradition but two, arriving nearly a century apart. Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe settled the Rue des Rosiers from the 1880s, bringing the food of Poland, Russia and the shtetl. After the decolonization of North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, Sephardic Jews from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria layered onto the same street, bringing the food of the Maghreb. Both are still here, often a few doors apart, which is why you can eat two very different Jewish cuisines on one short block.

The Ashkenazi layer: bread, poppyseed, and pastrami

The older layer is the bakery and delicatessen tradition. Look for pletzel, the flat onion-and-poppyseed bread that may even share a root with the neighborhood's nickname, alongside poppyseed and cheese strudels, rye breads, and pickled and smoked fare. This is the food of the community that built the Art Nouveau synagogue at 10 rue Pavée in 1913 to 1914, an Orthodox congregation largely of Russian origin. The bakeries here are among the last places in Paris to serve this cuisine as an everyday thing rather than a curiosity.

The Sephardic layer: falafel and the North African street

The layer most visitors line up for is the falafel. The Rue des Rosiers falafel counters are a Sephardic North African contribution, chickpea fritters in pita with fried aubergine, hummus, cabbage and harissa, eaten standing on the street. The queues that form outside the busiest counters at lunchtime are the most visible sign that this street is still a living food destination and not a museum piece. That the two traditions coexist, a poppyseed strudel and a harissa falafel within sight of each other, is the whole history of the Pletzl on a plate.

Why the food outlasted so much else

The Marais survived, in general, because it was too poor to be worth demolishing, a story we tell in full in the Marais companion. The Jewish food street survived for a related reason: it stayed a working neighborhood for its community even as the surrounding blocks turned to luxury retail. Today the fashion boutiques press in from every side, but the falafel counters and the kosher bakeries hold their ground, which makes the street a rare thing in central Paris, a place where you can still eat the actual history rather than a themed version of it.

How to walk and eat it

Do the tour first and eat second, or eat as you go. The synagogue on rue Pavée and the food of rue des Rosiers are the same story told in two media, architecture and cuisine. For the deeper immigrant hillside on the other side of the city, where Chinese Wenzhou cooking layered onto North African cafés, see eating Belleville's Chinatown. For the whole city as a stack of layers, read Paris in layers.