France: Aisle be back

Head for Calais with a fist full of Euros. Venture past the mountains of cheap lager and your next booze-cruise could turn into a gourmet extravaganza.

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Don't mention the 5.45am start, nor the fact that I took a wrong turn as soon as I emerged from the Eurotunnel and ventured on to French soil. The important thing, and the reason I left London this morning and came to Calais, is that I am standing in front of the seafood counter at the Carrefour hypermarket. And it's magnificent.

Now this, you may think, is hardly trail-blazing. Each year, a million Brits shop at this Calais Carre-four (yes, there are two, and for this one you follow the signs to Euro Cité, not the centre of Calais – hence the wrong turn) – outnumbering even its French clientele. Most of them are after one thing: cheap beer. From 9am until 10pm, Monday to Saturday, this vast warehouse resounds to the clamour of the Great British booze-cruisers who arrive with empty Transit vans, load their trolleys in the four 100m-long aisles devoted to beer, wine and spirits, and head for one of the 58 check-outs.

Now my hunch is that, once you've made the journey, there must be something better to buy than beer. One of the two bestsellers in the store (next to the UK's favourite, Stella Artois) is the locally brewed, St Omer, a light lager. I try it. Let's just say that I'm now more convinced than ever that there must be more rewarding bargains in this mega-store.

The manager, Pierre Fournier, explains the lure of his alcohol section: you can easily save around 60 per cent against UK prices. The average saving on most other goods – from bread, patisseries, olive oil and chocolate to washing powder, baby clothes, footwear and DIY gear – is 40 per cent. Now I feel a challenge coming on. Double Your Money seems to be the name of the game here, so I set myself a mission to match that 60 per cent not by buying lager alone but with a combination of both good food and drink. And let's set a budget of about £100.

Wandering around the store with Fournier, I pass a large can of snails (eight dozen for £2.40) and a cheval steak (£2.40) – I'd love to pick it up, we are in France after all, but this is not the kind of bargain your average rost-bif is after, and this, after all, is the only Carrefour tailor-made for the British.

In fact this store is not representative of this massive global brand. Carrefour, France's biggest food chain and second in the world only to Walmart, launched its first self-service store near Paris in 1963. Now the firm has almost 10,000 outlets in 30 countries (including Belgium, Spain, Brazil, China, Korea and Japan – though not the US or UK) and is growing at a phenomenal rate – every week, somewhere in the world, one hypermarket, two supermarkets and seven community stores are opened.

But Euro Cité – a shopping centre with clothing, homeware, sport and beauty shops plus 20 restaurants, English pubs, pizza and burger bars, an Oddbins and a Tesco wine shop – is all about Brits abroad. "The Euro Cité site belongs to Eurotunnel and they asked us to put a store here," says Fournier. "We opened in 1995 and were full on the first day. But the first bank said you must be crazy, it can't work – this was years before the Channel ferries lost the right to sell Duty Free goods."

Soon I'm tuning-out from Monsieur Fournier and my trolley is filling. Carrefour is beguiling. It is the least cluttered of any supermarket with aisles so wide busses could pass through in opposite directions. The music is soft. Everything looks wonderfully clean and it smells of nothing but fresh baking (speaking of which, I spy 20 fantastic-looking butter croissants for £4).

Other things are less impressively priced – strawberries, artichokes and, curiously, even garlic. And the garlic stinks. Not literally, but it's sprouting green when I cut into it and isn't up to he quality of the packs you can buy in the UK.

But at the meat counter, everything is exquisitely butchered and presented. In the deli the pâtés are a dream. So I snap up some duck and a perche, a salami-like saussicon. But when I arrive at that seafood stand, the gourmet epicentre of the store, the value challenge seems all too easy. You can only buy so many perishables, I figure, and though I've tasted excellent pâtés and patisseries, a plat de fruits de mer (usually made up at the weekends) has to be my star buy. You could go for a two-person serving for £4. But the four-person ensemble is the star of the show: one large brown crab, two more crab claws, eight langoustines of various sizes, a dozen crayfish large and small, a pound of unshelled, fresh sweet Atlantic prawns, half a pound of brown shrimps, two dozen cooked whelks and four dozen winkles. It costs just £15, and the quality is incredible.

Back home, we don't seem to offer this kind of fresh seafood in such quantities for such little money. I'm guessing (and I've been looking around since I got back to attempt to find comparable quality produce) but I'd say this platter is about £35 worth. It's arranged on a polystyrene tray spread with crushed ice and foil, and finally wrapped in clingfilm. That looks enough to feed an army, but I throw in 24 Marennes oysters for good will and walk off before the Dutch mussels tempt me.

Elsewhere in the 11,000sq m store, there are plenty more bargains to be had. As for bread, I resist the obvious choice (baguette) and go for a boule bio, a dense, round, organic loaf. Then there's all those great cheeses and some butter to go with it.

One apple pie, a bottle of Provencal olive oil, some petit fours and pistachios later, I thought I'd head back to the booze, partly because you can't ignore the liquid bargains, and partly to inspire the Brits to venture across the aisles to explore the food section. And – OK, I'll admit it – a few beers wouldn't go amiss during the World Cup.

I come across a British couple, Eric and Ann Skellett, from near Leeds Castle in Kent. They are trying, without success, to track down a Passetoutgrain (a Burgundy) and a Gros Plant sur Lie (a Muscadet), both of which they had bought here before. So not every- one rushes blindly for lager. In fact, Eric is the chairman of a wine circle. Doubtless, some of the wine is poor (at 80p a bottle, the Minervois looks too good to be true) but in a locked cabinet I glimpsed a Château Pétrus Pomerol 1986 at around £450, so if you've got higher intentions, you should find something to suit.

I come across two more Brits, Caroline and Bridget. This time I peek into their trolley. It's pretty much filled with beer, but there are a few other things – batteries and dried pasta (not the most thrilling of foods). Still, they had to make it back to the train at 2.30pm to be back in Sidcup for the school run. Is that the why food isn't up there with beer? I can't help wondering. Maybe it takes too long to find the gastronomic bargains.

I'm unperturbed. The average British customer comes here two or three times a year, and there's a hard-core following who come 10 times – almost every month – says Fournier. That must lead to familiarity with what's on offer. And I can see a lively community spirit, with shoppers assessing each other's buys and swapping notes. If only this could happen over in the food aisles.

If it all looks a bit daunting, here are a couple of pointers. Carrefour puts its own name on choice brands, and they're pretty good bets if you're unsure of the competition. Other safe options bear the Leflets label, denoting produce from suppliers with which Carrefour works closely.

Doing the price comparison against my usual stores (supermarkets, foodhalls, corner shores), I'd just about met the challenge. £106.35 spent. UK value: £244.91, I reckon. The saving (£138.56) covers the price of the crossing nearly three times over. And I'd managed to resist the new set of enamelled Le Creuset casseroles (£100) which sells at over £200 here.

But the best part of the day, without doubt, was getting home. Because, while showing off that seafood platter, I noticed that it had to be eaten the same day. And, believe me, that was not a problem. *

Carrefour, Euro Cité, Calais, tel: 00 33 321 46 75 55. Michael Bateman travelled to Calais with Eurotunnel. Day returns for one car start at around £49. For offers and more details see www.eurotunnel.com