The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent, a man mistaken for a political dissident and jailed during the French Coup of 1851. Freed, Florent finds work as a quality inspector of fish at Paris's Les Halles market. The bulk of the work is concerned with a lavish verbal rendition of the market, a fixture of modern Paris at the time, and with Florent's extremely refined palette and his experience of the foods on offer at Les Halles.