In the mood for food (and memoirs)
Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard
In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman-and never went home again.
Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pave au poivre, the steak’s pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce?
Lunch in Paris is the story of a young woman caught up in two passionate affairs-one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Plunging headlong into the most romantic of cities, Bard encounters bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size-two femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen) and soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate soufflé). The deeper Bard immerses herself in French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate.
Bard’s memoir, with its mouthwatering recipes, is an irresistible adventure for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change her life.
Honestly, if I saw this book in a bookstore, I would probably glance at it and think, “Hmm, another memoir of an American who falls in love in (and with) Paris. NEXT!” But since it was sitting so innocuously on my mother’s bookshelf, and since reading slumps tend to make one more spontaneous than usual when picking the next book to read, I opened to the first page and found this: “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date. I say halfway because we had finished lunch but not yet ordered coffee.”
After those tantalizing first lines, I was hooked. Lunch in Paris is a mouth-watering account of how an American woman found herself in Paris, not only because of the Frenchman she had met, but also because of the food she fell in love with. While that sounds like well-covered territory in territory (Julia Child will always be the standard bearer for this), in a way it’s not because this book covers a very specific moment in Bard’s life: when she decides to settle into Paris for the long run. As she discovers, this is not all romantic and rosy as the movies would have us think: the language is a challenge for her, even with her high school level proficiency; she has limited job prospects; and at times, as an expat, she can’t deny the loneliness of being away from her friends and family.
Yet despite such hurdles, what kept her committed to staying and building a life with Gwendal (whom she would eventually marry) was the food. Like that very first lunch in Paris, French food was her introduction to French culture, and helped guide her through the many changes she would encounter in a few short years. From falling in love to setting the wedding menu to preparing meals for a family funeral, Bard marks major life events with the foods she ate: mussels with white wine and fennel, pork ribs with honey, trout with cherry tomatoes baked in foil. As a bonus, she also ends each chapter with accompanying recipes, many of which I bookmarked. Lunch in Paris may seem like “yet another” memoir of an American in Paris, but it’s much more delicious than that.
Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain
In the ten years since Anthony Bourdain’s classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business-and for Anthony Bourdain.
Medium Raw tracks Bourdain’s unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, in a series of take-no-prisoners confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.
Beginning with a secret, highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs that he compares to a mafia summit, Bourdain pulls back the curtain-but never pulls his punches on the modern gastronomical revolution. Cutting right to the bone, Bourdain sets his sights on some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, the young superstar chef; the revered Alice Waters; the Top Chef contestants; and many more. Medium Raw is the deliciously funny, shocking delectable result, sure to delight philistines and gourmands alike.
Anthony Bourdain is a man of many contradictions. Although he started out as a cook, and will readily admit his less-than-stellar culinary talents compared to the real giants in the restaurant business, he has no shame about hobnobbing with big names like Eric Ripert and David Chang. He doesn’t hide his distaste towards those who have “sold out”-but then conveniently leaves out the fact that he himself has gone mainstream a long time ago, as evident in his recent appearances on reality TV. A former drug addict, he looks back on his cocaine-addled days from the sobering perspective of a new father.
It’s hard to pin down who exactly Anthony Bourdain is, which is what makes his writing so endlessly fascinating. Medium Raw seems more like a collection of essays rather than a cohesive memoir, and although that would usually be a negative for me (especially when expecting the latter), his writing is so good that I didn’t care a bit. From his rant on Alice Waters to the rise of David Chang to the boom and bust of fine dining in the wake of the 2008 recession, Bourdain always has something substantial (and only sometimes contrarian) to say. But his real genius lies in his writing on food: His chapter on his most memorable meals from around the world is worth the price of admission alone. (Just thinking about that seafood platter in France is already making my mouth salivate.) And when he not only writes about the foods he has eaten, but does a nuanced, sensitive profile on the hardworking people who make them, like Justo Thomas, who prepares all the fresh fish at Le Bernardin? The result is both culinary and literary magic.
In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman-and never went home again.
Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pave au poivre, the steak’s pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce?
Lunch in Paris is the story of a young woman caught up in two passionate affairs-one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Plunging headlong into the most romantic of cities, Bard encounters bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size-two femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen) and soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate soufflé). The deeper Bard immerses herself in French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate.
Bard’s memoir, with its mouthwatering recipes, is an irresistible adventure for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change her life.
Honestly, if I saw this book in a bookstore, I would probably glance at it and think, “Hmm, another memoir of an American who falls in love in (and with) Paris. NEXT!” But since it was sitting so innocuously on my mother’s bookshelf, and since reading slumps tend to make one more spontaneous than usual when picking the next book to read, I opened to the first page and found this: “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date. I say halfway because we had finished lunch but not yet ordered coffee.”
After those tantalizing first lines, I was hooked. Lunch in Paris is a mouth-watering account of how an American woman found herself in Paris, not only because of the Frenchman she had met, but also because of the food she fell in love with. While that sounds like well-covered territory in territory (Julia Child will always be the standard bearer for this), in a way it’s not because this book covers a very specific moment in Bard’s life: when she decides to settle into Paris for the long run. As she discovers, this is not all romantic and rosy as the movies would have us think: the language is a challenge for her, even with her high school level proficiency; she has limited job prospects; and at times, as an expat, she can’t deny the loneliness of being away from her friends and family.
Yet despite such hurdles, what kept her committed to staying and building a life with Gwendal (whom she would eventually marry) was the food. Like that very first lunch in Paris, French food was her introduction to French culture, and helped guide her through the many changes she would encounter in a few short years. From falling in love to setting the wedding menu to preparing meals for a family funeral, Bard marks major life events with the foods she ate: mussels with white wine and fennel, pork ribs with honey, trout with cherry tomatoes baked in foil. As a bonus, she also ends each chapter with accompanying recipes, many of which I bookmarked. Lunch in Paris may seem like “yet another” memoir of an American in Paris, but it’s much more delicious than that.
Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain
In the ten years since Anthony Bourdain’s classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business-and for Anthony Bourdain.
Medium Raw tracks Bourdain’s unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, in a series of take-no-prisoners confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.
Beginning with a secret, highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs that he compares to a mafia summit, Bourdain pulls back the curtain-but never pulls his punches on the modern gastronomical revolution. Cutting right to the bone, Bourdain sets his sights on some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, the young superstar chef; the revered Alice Waters; the Top Chef contestants; and many more. Medium Raw is the deliciously funny, shocking delectable result, sure to delight philistines and gourmands alike.
Anthony Bourdain is a man of many contradictions. Although he started out as a cook, and will readily admit his less-than-stellar culinary talents compared to the real giants in the restaurant business, he has no shame about hobnobbing with big names like Eric Ripert and David Chang. He doesn’t hide his distaste towards those who have “sold out”-but then conveniently leaves out the fact that he himself has gone mainstream a long time ago, as evident in his recent appearances on reality TV. A former drug addict, he looks back on his cocaine-addled days from the sobering perspective of a new father.
It’s hard to pin down who exactly Anthony Bourdain is, which is what makes his writing so endlessly fascinating. Medium Raw seems more like a collection of essays rather than a cohesive memoir, and although that would usually be a negative for me (especially when expecting the latter), his writing is so good that I didn’t care a bit. From his rant on Alice Waters to the rise of David Chang to the boom and bust of fine dining in the wake of the 2008 recession, Bourdain always has something substantial (and only sometimes contrarian) to say. But his real genius lies in his writing on food: His chapter on his most memorable meals from around the world is worth the price of admission alone. (Just thinking about that seafood platter in France is already making my mouth salivate.) And when he not only writes about the foods he has eaten, but does a nuanced, sensitive profile on the hardworking people who make them, like Justo Thomas, who prepares all the fresh fish at Le Bernardin? The result is both culinary and literary magic.