E. Dehillerin - Paris, since 1820

At 18-20 Rue Coquillière, in the heart of Les Halles, you'll find the holy grail for chefs: E. Dehillerin.

If you love copper, you have to go once in your life.

From the outside, it's unmistakable. From the inside, it's pure organized chaos. As Atlas Obscura describes it, the walls - and even the ceiling - are lined with copper pans, kitchen paraphernalia and classic cooking implements. No fancy design store. Just a historic green facade with bold yellow letters, and inside, two floors of professional cookware stacked from floor to ceiling. Copper sauteuses hanging from the ceiling, walls lined with molds, whisks, knives, and everything a kitchen could ever need.

The shop traces its roots back to 1820 as a coppersmith workshop. In the 1880s, André Charles Eugène de Hillerin de Préssec acquired several hardware and coppersmithing workshops and in 1890 opened his large store at its current address. The copper was made in the famous workshops of Villedieu and stamped with the iconic oval mark: "E. Dehillerin Paris" - today highly coveted by collectors.

This is where Julia Child bought her first copper pots in Paris in the 1940s, where Paul Bocuse and Michel Troisgros shopped, and where Anthony Bourdain came to get lost. Legend even says Dehillerin supplied the kitchens of the Titanic.

Orders are still taken by hand in a little red notebook, wrapped in brown paper with the rooster sticker. Once you've been, you never forget it.

Here you can compare your own Dehillerin stamp with the ones I've collected so far.