A tourist in Paris has told others to avoid getting one particular street food after his shocking experience.
Mark Roberts, an American who took a trip to the French capital, spotted a stand selling crepes when he was by the Eiffel Tower. After realising he hadn’t tried one yet during his time in Paris, he decided to go for it but this turned out to be a big mistake. He is now telling others what popular street food to avoid in Paris.
He tucked into the dessert then saw the man who served him his crepe walk past him holding bags with the crepe ingredients inside. Disgusted, he witnessed the vendor put the bags in the sewer and Mark posted a video on TikTok to share the tale.
The American tourist began the video by saying: “Why did no one warn me not to eat the crepes in Paris before I came to Paris? Because yesterday I ate a crepe in Paris and I almost instantaneously regretted it.”
He explained that “everything was normal at first” and he decided to go and see the Eiffel Tower at night because he “heard that it sparkles”. When he got there he was happy to find out that in did in fact sparkle and while he was there he saw a crepe stand and decided to buy one.
Mark went up to the stand and ending up spending 15 Euros on a Nutella crepe with strawberries and bananas. He felt he paid “way too much by it” but he could “kind of justify” the price seeing as he was at the Eiffel Tower and he also found the man making the crepe “super nice and friendly”.
Mark continued: “None the less he gets done making my crepe and he hands it to me and this thing just looks beautiful, I’m ready to eat it. Now I like to sit down when I eat so I needed to find a bench and near the Eiffel Tower it’s super crowded so all the benches were filled so I had to walk a bit to find a bench that I could sit on but eventually I found an empty bench and I started eating my crepe and it was in fact delicious.
“As I’m sitting there having the last bites of my crepe I see the dude that served me the crepe walk right in front of me and he’s holding these clear plastic bags of something but I can’t tell what it is at first but I look a little closer and I realise one of the bags had crepe batter in it and another bag had chopped fruit.
“I’m just thinking that he’s like taking the leftovers from his business that day. Update: It was not. Then I see this dude walk up the path a little bit more and then he looks around to see if anybody’s looking and then he opens a manhole cover and proceeds to put the bag in the sewer and the worst part was before I realised what was happening I had already taken my last bite of the crepe.”
He did a search online afterwards and learned that street vendors storing their stuff in the sewer is a thing in Paris. Mark’s TikTok video has got a staggering 23.9 million views, 2.3 million likes and 12,000 comments.
TikTok users seemed to already know about this as the first comment under the video is “sewer crepe was my first thought” and the second is “I heard about sewer crepes a while back lol”. Another claimed: “They specifically say not to buy anything near the Eiffel Tower.”
However, for some people Mark’s video was the first time they’d heard about ‘sewer crepes’. One user said: “The more I find out about Paris the more traumatised I get.”