I have never seen such an enormous standing rib roast of beef. It’s like all my Sundays come at once. Madame sharpens her knife and cuts the meat into huge, Flintstonian slabs. There is close to one kilogram of meat on my plate; the outside dark, gnarled and crusty, the inside bright pink. Bowls of salty crusted, finely cut pommes frites and huge earthenware pots of Dijon mustard arrive, and wine glass-es are filled with a dark, rich Château Clerc-Milon from Pauillac. Talk about breakfast setting you up for the day.

Breakfast? It is 7.30am at the Restaurant L’Étoile at the famous Rungis market on the outskirts of Paris, and I am knocking back red wine and slathering mustard on rare beef — me, who can barely raise a whimper over my porridge. What (apart from half a cow) has got into me?

It must be market fever. I always head for the local market when I am travelling, to see what’s in season, and what the locals eat. It’s like plugging in to the real life of the place, as opposed to its designer shops or tourist-packed museums.

But I had never been to The Big One. Rungis. At 230ha, it is bigger than the principality of Monaco. It supplies Paris with nearly half of its fish, meat, fruit, vegetables and flowers. Every day 1,690,000 tonnes of products are delivered by 26,000 trucks, and bought by 20,000 regular buyers.

But Rungis, created after the controversial closure of Les Halles in 1969, is wholesale only, and open only to professionals — restaurateurs, chefs and registered buyers. I have tried before to get in, but a guide costs hundreds of euros and the rare tours are only for 20 people. So to get in, I find myself a chef with impeccable credentials. Laurent Delarbre, head chef of the legendary Café de la Paix at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel, is one of the rising young stars of the French food scene. In spite of a disconcerting resemblance to Rowan Atkinson, the Auvergne-born Delarbre is deadly serious about his food, and was awarded the coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 2004. While many of Paris’s top chefs are content to phone in their orders, Delarbre insists on visiting the market as often as he can. Several times a year, he allows a small group of food lovers to tag along, as part of a highly exclusive gourmet tour.

The night before, half a dozen of us had dined together in Café de la Paix, feasting on Delarbre’s delicately flavoured modern French menu.

But I regret the late night when the alarm goes the next morning at 3am. Forty minutes later, we pull up inside Rungis, at the fish market. It is huge, looming out of the darkness like a giant hospital A & E. Inside, it is clinically bright, freezing cold, and surprisingly cacaphonic, full of vicious little motorised carts ready to mow you down, and white-suited figures bending over boxes of gleaming fish.

“The EU rules are now very strict and full of hygiene regulations,” explains Delarbre, poking a tray of live prawns to make them jump. Instead, there is aisle after aisle of nobbly-shelled spider crabs from St Malo, shimmering silver bream, shiny gilt head, and huge swordfish. I note the famous names on the sides of the boxes: Le Meurice, Guy Savoy, Gallopin, the Ritz, Gaya (owned by Pierre Gagnaire) and Alcazar (Conran’s Parisian outpost). It’s a do-it-yourself restaurant guide.

Next stop, the “growers’ market”, a smaller pavilion supplied only by producers of the Ile de France. In fact, ancient law decrees the produce must be grown “within two hours’ walk” of Nôtre Dame.

Everywhere we go, Delarbre sniffs and smells, prods and squeezes, taking only the finest and youngest produce. “I look always for variety, for taste, and for how well it holds it flavour,” he says. We nod approvingly, not least because he is choosing the produce for our cookery class and lunch.

Next we find ourselves in the meat pavilion with Olivier Metzger, beef supplier to the stars — as in France’s Michelin-starred chefs. He grasps huge carcasses of beef and shows us the difference between Simmenthals and Limousins, and between the grass-fed and the commercially fed.

By 9am, the place is closing down. I want my bed but in the InterContinental’s kitchens, there is our lunch to be made with Delarbre.

Amazingly, by nightfall I am hungry again, raring to dine. But all I crave is that rare beef, that red wine, and those salty frites. I have learnt one of the eternal truths of life, that nothing will ever taste as good as an early-morning market breakfast.

Need to know

The Rungis market tour is organised by the InterContinental Le Grand hotel. A two-night special package includes breakfast, dinner with wine in the Café de la Paix, market tour with chef Laurent Delarbre or his sous-chefs and an interpreter, cooking class, and lunch with wines chosen by sommelier Eric Verdier. Next dates are July 12-14, and August 9-11. Prices start at £2,580 for two people sharing a double room. Details: 00 33 1 40 07 32 34, www.paris.intercontinental.com. Eurostar (0870 5186186, www.eurostar.com) has return fares to Paris from £59.

To market, to market

If your pocket doesn’t run to a two-day gastrofest in Paris, here are some more accessible markets:

Rialto Markets, Venice

Fishmarket 7.30am–noon Tuesday to Saturday. Fruit and vegetable stalls 7.30am-1pm Monday to Saturday. Chefs fight bag-clutching nuns and bejewelled matrons for the cheapest of the sweet little shrimps from the lagoon. The fruit and veg market is a riot of colour and fragrance, the stalls laden with musky wild mushrooms, sweet little peas and earthy green artichokes. There are plenty of shadowy little bacari (wine bars) to collapse in exhausted, shopping done.

Kauppatori, Helsinki

Monday to Friday 6.30am-6pm, to 4pm Saturday; Sunday 9am-4pm. Summer only. On the waterfront, this is a real taste of old Finland. Along the docks, dour fishermen sell fresh and smoked fish from the backs of their boats, and in the old indoor market you can stock up on reindeer chips, varieties of herring, rye bread or caviar. Pick up a picnic before jumping on a ferry to a nearby island.

La Boqueria (Mercat Sant Josep), La Rambla 89, Raval, Barcelona

8am-8.30pm Monday to Saturday. A sideshow alley of fruit, vegetables and fish, full of colour, life, movement and great smells. More than 300 stalls line 11 perpetually packed aisles. Luckily, there are great little breakfast and lunch bars, because La Boqueria makes you ravenous.

Central Market, Athens

Athenis Street, between Sofokleous and Evripidou. 7am to 3pm Monday to Saturday. Start at the glorious olive and cheese shops and work your way in to the riotously coloured delicatessens, with their garlands of semi-dried pork sausages. Admire giant purple squid and rosy-pink octopus. The crowd is almost medieval, yelling out prices, baying for bargains, and the whole scene is lit, surreally, with fairy lights.

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