No laughing matter
I still remember a British friend telling me that she always carried a card saying in French something along the lines of “I really do have a peanut allergy and it could kill me”. Back then, the French word for peanut allergy was something like arachidophobie, which to uneducated ears made her sound as though she wasn’t fond of spiders. Joking aside, until ten or so years ago most French people thought that unless it was against your religion, everyone should eat everything (except perhaps beans on toast and Christmas pudding). Allergies and dietary requirements were for unfortunates whose palates had been badly trained in the cradle. These days, however, you are perfectly safe going into almost any Parisian café and saying, “I’d like the salade niçoise without tuna” or “no ham in the goat’s cheese salad, please”. That last one is a favourite of mine, and is always well received. This is why I was annoyed to see an article published online about how Parisians were supposedly up in arms about a boulanger selling vegan croissants. Apart from the fact that vegan croissants have been around forever (they’re called croissants ordinaires and are made with margarine instead of butter), Parisians don’t honestly care who tries to sell what food.
If you want to open a shop selling donkey cheese or fish-flavoured wine, that’s up to you. If there are enough crazy customers to keep you solvent, pourquoi pas? All Parisians actually care about is being able to get what they want – so they’ll only get upset if your donkey cheese shop replaces their boulangerie. I’ve also read recently about cruffins (muffin-shaped croissants) “taking Paris by storm”. Personally I’ve never spotted a cruffin in the wild. So if they did take the city by storm, that same storm clearly blew them away again.