PARIS

FOR me, the Rue des Martyrs is the last real street in Paris.

It is here that I find artichokes so young they can be eaten raw, a Côtes du Rhône so smooth it could be a fine burgundy, and a cow cheese so creamy it’s best eaten with a spoon.

I take my cues from the late, great Julia Child. “The Parisian grocers insisted that I interact with them personally,” Julia wrote in her 2006 autobiography, “My Life in France.” “If I wasn’t willing to take the time to get to know them and their wares, then I would not go home with the freshest legumes or cuts of meat in my basket. They certainly made me work for my supper.”

So I interact. I work for my supper. Sometimes I even pretend to be Julia, with her American-accented French. I caress tomatoes, inspect lamb loins, sniff Camembert, sample wild boar charcuterie and go all wobbly over sugarcoated brioche. No one except my children makes fun of me.

I have been embraced as a member of the neighborhood “family,” as the merchants call the bas (lower) Rue des Martyrs. They know — and seem to like — one another. When I needed a stool small enough to fit into a shower after my older daughter injured her leg, the manager of the variety store borrowed one for me from the nearby jeweler. When Fahmi Hamrouni, a greengrocer at the Petit Jardin (No. 3), ran out of flat green beans one day, he grabbed handfuls for me from the greengrocer across the street.