Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [142]
INTERVIEW
Alexander Lobrano
Travel and food writer Alec Lobrano likes to say he has a “bipolar food background,” which he explains by the fact that his parents hail from Boston and New Orleans, two American cities with two very different food traditions. Growing up in Connecticut and spending summers with two great-aunts in New Orleans provided him with a very broad gastronomic background, but this didn’t prepare him for Paris, which he first visited in 1972. He’d just spent six weeks elsewhere in Europe, and he, his mother, and two brothers were meeting his father and sister in Paris. The family had more than one meal at the noteworthy restaurant Androuët, which specializes in cheese, and were even taken down into the cheese cellar by flashlight, an experience he says “hit me right over the head like a hammer.” When, on his last night in the city, he ate boeuf bourguignon and onion soup at a little subterranean place in the Latin Quarter, he savored every drop and craved more. And as he notes in Hungry for Paris, “Little did I know then that this addiction would become the compass by which I would live my life.” Not surprisingly, Alec burst into tears when his family left Paris on that first trip.
Thirty-eight years later, Alec no longer has to wonder when he’ll be back in Paris or plan elaborate schemes to get himself there, as he’s been living in the city since 1986. He served as Gourmet’s European correspondent for ten years and was an editor of the Zagat Paris Restaurants guide, and he feels he sees Paris from the level of the tabletop. In 2008 the first edition of Hungry for Paris was published (Random House), and in 2010 an updated edition was issued. In utter honesty, I can’t imagine anyone visiting Paris, for the first or fiftieth time, and not consulting this guide. It is discriminating without being haughty or ruthless; it is well written, interesting, fun to read, practical, and indispensable. As Alec informs us, he tries a half dozen new restaurants and returns to old favorites each week, and all the restaurants he recommends are places he’s frequented many times. Though this obviously isn’t a guarantee for the visitor—anyone can try a place on an off night, and tastes do differ—he vouches for the “seriousness, reliability, and quality of their cooking.” In addition to the reviews, I especially like the essays, notably “The French Foreign Legion: The Parisian Passion for North African Cooking,” “Table for One,” and “The Rise and Fall of the Parisian Brasserie.” It’s equally valuable to read the section “But What About? Or Why Certain Famous Restaurants Aren’t Included in This Book,” and the section listing places open all or part of the weekend is perhaps alone worth the price of the book. Whether you use the book to search for modest establishments or grand Michelin-starred temples, you will find, as Alec does, “singularly spectacular eating” in the City of Light.
Photo Credit 29.1
After some years of corresponding only by e-mail, I finally met Alec, in Paris, on an overcast, drizzly day at a café called Le Nemrod. We sat outside on the covered terrace, but after the raindrops began to fall on our table and my notebook was getting wet, I asked if there was another culinary haunt in the area that Alec particularly liked where we could go and take a few photos. As luck would have it, Alec said there was a new pâtisserie that had recently opened that he’d only briefly seen and wanted to revisit, so we walked a short distance to La Pâtisserie des Rêves (see this page). And, yes, for me at least, it most definitely is a pâtisserie worthy of rêves. The photos here of Alec inside the bakery are in black and white, so you’ll have to use your imagination to envision the bright and airy interior and the mod colors of hot pink, lime green, and orange. Rêves is the creation of chef and cookbook author Philippe Conticini, and it is without doubt one of the most creative pâtisseries anywhere in the world. Alec and I found time to chat in between my many oohs and ahhs.
Q: The subtitle