There are many reasons to read this book, first and foremost to savor sentences that flow from one to another with both elegance and wit. Part memoir and part guide to today's Parisian restaurant scene, author Alexander Lobrano is uniquely intimate with today's restaurant happenings. This is a culinary tour guide par excellence. His love of Paris shines through the book, and his writing is so warmly personal that the reader is almost arm in arm with him. Read this if you are going to Paris. Read this to pretend you were there.
Lobrano opens the door to Parisian eating with a guide to mores and etiquette, from complaints (can you complain?) and children (do they bring their children?) to dogs and dress code. Mixed in with this Lobrano shifts into memoir. He was raised in Connecticut before the awareness of French cooking, and his description of his "developing but wobbly knowledge of French food" reflects how the culinary consciousness of America slowly opened to the epicurean delights of Gallic cooking.
And then the reader sets out to tour, strolling with Lobrano from arrondisment to arrondisment. Each restaurant, whether a cozy bistro or one of haute cuisine is described in its ambience. Lobrano recommends the dishes that are not to be missed, and introduces the chef. The reader joins him at Chez Georges where he encounters Julia Child eating a buttered radish, dines with him on "two snowy filets of John Dory posed on a thick emerald pudding of riced artichoke hearts," then steps into Joséphine where he states, "Dinner at Joséphine the other night left me feeling optimistic about the future of France."
There are additional essays, all equally charming, about aspects of Parisian dining, as well as maps and photographs by Life Magazine photographer, Bob Peterson
An enticing book that will lure you to Paris where you will surely go in search of Lobrano as well as food.
About the author: Alexander Lobrano is Gourmet Magazine's European correspondent and has written for almost every food and travel magazine since moving to Paris.
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