Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [140]
RECOMMENDED READING
Beginning with my Tuscany and Umbria book, I invited Nach Waxman and Matt Sartwell, of New York’s Kitchen Arts & Letters, to recommend cookbooks and culinary titles to Collected Traveler readers. Kitchen Arts opened in 1983 and is the largest store in the United States devoted exclusively to books on food and wine, with more than thirteen thousand titles in English and other languages. I previously spent two sessions with Nach and Matt and filled up three hours on my tape recorder, which proved to be great for my Tuscany and Umbria book but hugely time-consuming for Nach and Matt. So for this Paris edition, they took a different tack and came up with a list they’ve entitled “Ten Great Ways to Prepare for a Trip to Paris.” Their excellent picks are as follows:
The Food of France, Waverley Root (Knopf, 1958; Vintage, 1992). Root puts French cooking into historical context and tells readers what the culinary specialties are in each region of France. He says, this is what they eat in this place, and therefore this is what you want to look for when you’re in local restaurants. And since everything in France ends up in Paris in one way or another, this book is eminently helpful.
Marling Menu Master for France, William Marling (Altarinda, 1971). This is perfect for the traveler who wants a quick and easy, get-me-out-of-trouble, what-am-I-eating book. It’s arranged by course and it provides handy descriptions of items you’d find on a menu.
The A–Z of French Food, edited by Geneviève de Temmerman (Scribo Editions, 1995) is for the more ambitious culinary traveler. This slender guide is the most comprehensive French-to-English food dictionary we’ve ever seen. In addition to menu items, it covers cooking terminology, which is especially helpful if you’re having a conversation with a waiter or chef or even a home cook. We always keep on hand a standard English–French dictionary, but it just doesn’t cover a significant number of food words. This A to Z guide is very popular with American cooks who are going to work in French kitchens.
Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, Clotilde Dusoulier (Broadway, 2008). The advantage with this book is that Clotilde is Parisian but she lived in the United States for some years, so she understands Paris the way an American might see it. She’s both realistic and serious in her approach. And though she covers some of the standard places, she also treats the neighborhood places that a Parisian would know but that are not likely to turn up in a guidebook.
The Brasseries of Paris, François Thomazeau and Sylvain Ageorges (Little Bookroom, 2007). The brasserie is the kind of more casual experience that we think most Americans are looking for when they come to Paris, and this modestly sized portable book is filled with attractive profiles of appealing places for every type of traveler.
The Ethnic Paris Cookbook, Charlotte Puckette and Olivia Kiang-Snaije (Dorling Kindersley, 2007). This book is unlike any other we’ve seen and it brings together the full range of France’s former colonies and beyond. The French have touched the whole world, after all, and it’s natural that all of these cuisines are to be found in Paris. Organized by the ethnic communities in Paris, with chapters on North Africa, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Japan, it contains recipes, of course, but it is also a guide to some terrific restaurants, corner shops, and ethnic markets. The kinds of ethnic foods on offer in Paris aren’t the same as those to be found in the States, so this is a good book to read before you depart.
Paris Pâtisseries: History, Shops, Recipes (Flammarion, 2010). With this book you have complete fantasy fulfillment! It’s very dangerous to page through, and if you’re wondering about whether it’s worth going to Paris, it could change your mind. Legendary pâtissier Pierre Hermé wrote the foreword, and as each chapter is devoted to a type of pâtisserie—chocolate, contemporary, viennoiseries, cakes from childhood