a feast for the eyes

It has been a week of discoveries. Today’s: DavidLebovitz.com a.k.a. “David Lebovitz… Living the Sweet Life in Paris.”

It’s worth a visit just to scroll through his posts on Paris food markets. You can see how this might appeal to my ongoing weakness for all things of the French and foodie cultures (even if I am just an outside observer of both).

For a little background on Lebovitz here are some highlights from Lebovitz’s bio:

• received much of his training at Alice Waters’ world-famous restaurant Chez Panisse
• named one of the “Top Five Pastry Chefs in the Bay Area” by the San Francisco Chronicle
• author of numerous gorgeous looking books
• leads lively one-day Chocolate and Bakery Tours of Paris, as well as week-long chocolate tours of Europe, including France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy several time a year

What’s not to love? Enjoy and bon apetite!

for the entrepreneuer

So you’ve decided you simply must flee your cubicle-bound existence for the marvelous cultural adventure of life in France. Naturally, you would very much like to be able to pay rent and be a contributing member of French society, but you can’t find any employment opportunities. Not one to be thwarted, you decide to start your own business in France.

Well, lucky you! Webooks is offering a free online version of the book Starting a Business in France by Richard Whiting. Useful vocabulary included!

Perhaps it’s time I opened up that bookstore…

wishing more than ever

From one of my favorite bloggers: Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini is hosting an event this week at one of my favorite bookstores:

On Thursday, December 6th, at 7pm, I will be giving a talk and signing my cookbook (in its British or American version) at the legendary bookstore Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.

Admission is free; seating will be on a first come first served basis.

Oh, and there will be cake.

Also keep an eye out for her new book, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, scheduled for release in April 2008.

Happy Monday!

reality check

Paris is one of the easiest cities in the world to romanticize. So easy, in fact, that we often forget the reality of the outskirts Paris. Away from the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, there is a far more troubled Paris. Yesterday’s news served as a reminder of these internal struggles.

From The New York Times:

Youth Clash With the Police in France

77 Police Officers Hurt in Paris Riots

For a better understanding of this Paris, I recommend picking up Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faize Guene. It’s a Paris that a tourist will never know otherwise, and it’s a Paris that demands attention.

book club: americans love paris

If my hypothetical Everything Paris Book Club is still in existence in 2010, I’ve no doubt this book will make the list: A History of Americans in Paris written by the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and historian David McCullough.

Highlights from the AP article:

“History isn’t only about politics and the military and social issues. It’s about literature and poetry and theater and music. … I’ve been fascinated for a long time with how much of American history has taken place in France, more than any other country than our own, and how much France and the French have been an influence on the United States and our way of life.”

. . . 

McCullough plans on writing about Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes and many others. He will note the fabled Parisian adventures of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, but not at length because “a lot of that is very familiar, and also because they were such self-promoters that I’m more inclined to write about other people.”

. . . 

McCullough acknowledges the love-hate relationship between the U.S. and France, from accusations that Jefferson had been corrupted by his time abroad, to the recent wave of antagonism brought on by French opposition to the Iraq war. But he believes that understanding the French is a way of understanding ourselves.

McCullough’s work-in-progress is currently untitled. Simon & Schuster have slated it to release in 2010.

if we had a book club…

The book club strikes me as a distinctly American phenomena. I like to imagine that the French have been having impromptu conversations about brilliant works of literature for as long as the cafe has been lining the streets of Paris. And yet, I can’t imagine them organzing something with a title so mundane as a “book club.” But one never knows…

Nevertheless, it strikes me as grand fun to have a book club about France. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to start one today, I’d encourage everyone to pick up a copy of The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn.

I stumbled across it on accident on the Borders new non-fiction table the other day. Paris? Le Cordon Bleu? Food? Endorsement by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love)? Sold.

I can barely wait to slip out of work early, pour myself a glass of red wine, build a fire, and curl up with this new find. Until then, I’ll content myself with the excerpt provided by npr.

her city, his city, your city

It’s not uncommon to come across a book by a food writer that at least mentions Paris. In fact, I think you would be hard pressed to come across a book about food that didn’t pay homage to the city where food and eating are counted as art nearly equal to that of any ouvre in the Louvre. But what is rare is to discover a food writer who can effectively sweep you away to the city, reach out from the pages to grab your hand, and in a few short paragraphs transport you from a $50 couch in Washington, DC, to a world of romance and new-ness, showing you a Paris that is as different from your Paris as apples from oranges and yet still so familiar. That is the sort of writer that Ruth Reichl is. And this is her Paris:

My Paris was uncomfortable pensions on the outskirts of town, cheap meals that started with watery soup and ended with watery flan. It was always being cold. It was hours peering through the gloom of the badly lighted Louvre.

Colman’s Paris was not mine.

He liked to start the day by strolling through the flower market and listening to the birds. Every morning he woke me with fresh flowers. Then he took me to Lauduree for coffee and croissants and we sat there, beneath the ancient paintings of nymphs and angels, bantering with the waitresses in their black dresses and white aprons. After three days we were regulars, and they didn’t even ask what we wanted, but simply put out the pots of coffee and hot milk, and the plates of croissants.

He showed me streets I had never seen before and small, out-of-the-way museums. He took me to the cemetery and we danced around Proust’s tomb, and afterward we went to Le Petit Zinc and ate platters of claires and speciales washed down with a cold, crisp Sancerre. We walked along the Seine in the damp November air. . .

(From Reichl, Ruth (2001). Comfort Me with Apples. New York: Random House.)

Not only is this simply a series of lovely images, but it demonstrates one of most remarkable aspects of Paris–every true lover of Paris has a Paris that is all their own. One you can hold close to your breast, knowing that while people from around the world visit the city each day, your Paris is yours to keep to yourself or choose to share with a lover or an old friend or a complete stranger. Reading about the city constantly invites us to see, taste, and experience a new Paris