Outdoor Markets Open in Feb

[EarlyDrive]

Forgive my ignorance on this -- will the outdoor markets (I'm using www.discoverfrance.net as a reference) be open in February? or should I only be looking into the indoor markets?
Thanks,
earlydrive

[mangeur]

Lucky you! Clementines from Morocco, the best of the best in our opinion, are only available in deep winter. They trounce those from Spain, Italy and Corsica.

[Parigi]

And Maltese oranges.

[EarlyDrive]

great!

[sunshine842]

since it's been brought up, are you folks seeing that the clementines aren't nearly as good this year as they've been in years past? I've had a few really good ones, but a dismaying number of them have been dry and don't have much flavor (regardless of where they were grown, by the way...origin was my first thought, so I tried different origins and still wasn't thrilled).

And lychees have been in short supply this year, too -- the best place I've found them so far was at Paris Store, where they're twice the price of the marche, but huge and sweet and juicy, when I can get them.

[mangeur]

Mid-December in Paris, we had some rather decent albeit expensive Italian clementines, usually not our favorite by a long shot. They had what I call "round" flavor: that proper balance of acid and sugar that is often lacking in the Spanish.

Back in California, I agree that much of the local product this year has not been particularly good.

[sunshine842]

I meant specifically the folks in Paris, but if you've not had great citrus either, then it indicates it's not a problem with our vendors, but an industry issue in general. Europe had extremely cold temperatures just before the harvest that I'm sure resulted in some of the fruit being frozen (a lot of the fruit I've had has had those dry patches that are indicative of a freeze), and I know that the Florida citrus industry has been hammered badly the last two winters by cold weather.

[Parigi]

"And lychees have been in short supply this year, too -- the best place I've found them so far was at Paris Store, where they're twice the price of the marche, but huge and sweet and juicy, when I can get them."

Not in the 9th ! We had a lychee glut that is only petering out now!!! The Mauritius/Réunion lychee is exra sweet even though the pit is somewhat large.

[sunshine842]

that's so weird -- I'm less than 25km from you, but have been in the shops this winter when NOBODY had lychees, and what they had were just okay.

Guess it's cause you ended up with all of them when the trucks left Rungis those days!

[Parigi]

Or because of my Tunisian primeur who was ecstatic about what was going on at home. He pushed a huge quantity of lychee on us, telling us it was the best fruit of the season. And he was right.

[sunshine842]

still weird that you'd have a glut, when all 6 of the non-maraicher primeurs in my market would be out. (Including the Tunisian guys, who weren't setting up shop when it was all going down.)

[sunshine842]

all markets are open year-round -- there might not be as many vendors in the winter, but they're all open unless specifically stated otherwise (which is pretty rare)

[vielleanglaise]

Outdoor markets will be open in February.