Local food writer Dana McMahan is inviting 10 travelers to Paris from April 6-12, 2024, for "Get Lost! In Paris," a food-themed week of “cooking, learning and exploring.”
McMahan and chef Alison Settle will teach travelers how to shop local markets and create meals with the best produce from their finds. They will also work with guests to prepare family-style meals in a 200-year-old apartment. The week will also include a Parisian-style picnic along the Canal Saint Martin, shopping for a proper kitchen knife, and enjoying a cheese and wine tasting with an expert. The trip is $2,200 per participant.
McMahan will also use her knowledge of Paris to help guests tailor their experiences for their personal tastes and help guests explore the Paris they want, not just the tourist traps.
It had been a thought of McMahan’s for some time to lead tours to Paris since she had spent so much time in the city. She’d taken friends and family to the city for their first times before, so she felt a unique ability to share the best parts of Paris with others.
While in Paris a few months ago, she met a woman in a cafe while dining alone. The woman told McMahan about coming to Paris with a group and how the tour leader had structured the trip for them to create their "perfect" personal Parisian adventure.
"I thought, 'Holy shit, I can do this,'" she said. “I just need the, “I'd been talking with Alison about something like this, and we came up with — we'll go to Paris with a chef and a writer and she will take people around the markets and show them basically how to shop for produce, how to pick the best stuff, and then how to develop a meal with it.”
Turns out the plan was right, but the ambition was, perhaps, a bit ahead of itself.
“We thought in October we were gonna pull this off in like two weeks' time and take a group. Turns out a lot of people don't just buy airfare with two weeks' notice. We still went. I was able to take some of that money [from selling a property] and pony it for this trip. This was all just out of pocket to go and do some recon.” said McMahan.
“We ended up doing a couple of pop-up dinners. We went to the market Friday morning. Alison bought all the stuff that looked good. It's her first time in Paris, first time in France. We had 10 people that night. 10 people the second night — influencers, journalists, we had a dude from the New York Times. The combined Instagram following of the people at these dinners was extremely intimidating. She [Settle] blew them away. These people were saying, ‘This is the best meal I can remember having.’ It knocked their socks off.”
McMahan fell in love with France as a child given a school project, but she didn’t make her first trip to France until she was 23 years old.
“I didn't actually love it the first time, but I kept going back, and it is now just the home of my heart,” she said.
In fact, McMahan has gone almost every year since to Paris.
“There are years, like this year, I probably spent three weeks there. When I land and get out of the plane and get into the city, I feel like I have woken up — that life back in Louisville is like the dream and that Paris is my actual real life,” she laughs.
“I know that sounds crazy when I say it out loud, but it's like I never left. I only went to sleep and then woke back up and was still there. And that's it. I am the most myself in Paris.”
