Janvier

The Buchets have been butchers, passing down their trade from father to son, since 1936. These days, it‘s Eddy who sells local, still-hunted game and pasture-raised meats (thanks to the excellent Ferme des Crutins) in an old community center which owes its name to a misunderstanding, in the literal sense of the term: “Janvier” is actually “Jambier,” the hustling grocer from La Traversée de Paris. Opposite the well-used butcher’s block and the counter stuffed to the brim with terrines, pipe dried sausages and other smoked sausages, there’s a film poster and black and white snaps of the Bourvil-Gabin duo as a nod to the aforementioned film. Under the impassive eye of a stuffed wild boar’s head (a distant cousin of the one a local hunter brought in this morning), this curer of hams butchers like no other – having learned his trade from the late Alsatian Jean-Louis Bruxer. When we stop by one Sunday morning it’s apero hour, a sacrosanct moment when Eddy can’t resist cracking open a bottle of fizzy wine. // Salty Lychee

THE HIDDEN GEM: The smoked bacon, dry-cured with bay leaf (€16 per kg), which takes three to four weeks to produce. A product that helped build the house’s reputation.