Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2000, 285 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2001, 304 pages
In France, you are what you eat. Mort Rosenblum applies his superb nose for news and fine fare to the food-drenched culture of a country that takes its cuisine as seriously as its politics.
In France, you are what you eat, and no one knows this better than Mort Rosenblum. Here, this internationally acclaimed journalist and James Beard Award-winning food writer for his last book, Olives, applies his superb nose for news and fine fare to the food-drenched culture of a country that takes its cuisine as seriously as its politics.
Wending his way through the French countryside, Rosenblum takes readers on a tour of The Roquefort country, where he finds two families left in a tiny village; they talk to their sheep, but each has ignored the other for three generations. In Paris, he finds Alain Ducasse, with six Michelin stars, hard at work building an haute cuisine empire. He visits a snail rancher, oyster rustlers, and the fabled Chateau Petrus. Bruno the Truffle King rhapsodizes to him about fragrant black fungus.
Looking at the way the French live through how they cook, eat, and market their cuisine, Rosenblum offers a picture of a country at war with the clichés that both define and degrade its national character. At a time when the public can't seem to get enough of all things French, here is a deliciously informative book that's food for thought and a feast for the senses.
A God in France
"The destiny of nations depends upon how they feed themselves . . .The pleasure of the table reigns among other pleasures, and it is the last to console when others are lost."
- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
"In France, one dines. Everywhere else, one eats."
- Montesquieu
Only in France could a loaf of bread come with a technical support phone number and an instruction manual thick with philosophy. Lionel Poilâne, who produces such bread, would be a mere baker in any other country. To the French, he is a national treasure, an artist whose medium is a 100-ton oven. In his black velvet string tie and gray workman's smock, tossing his Prince Valiant hair to punctuate a point, he assures a nation of a mere 60 million inhabitants that they still hold the lantern for billions of less enlightened mortals.
"Bread is the soul of civilization," Poilâne remarked one morning in the seat of his empire, a little redbrick boulangerie on the rue ...
If you liked A Goose in Toulouse, try these:
by Elaine Sciolino
Published 2020
A vibrant, enchanting tour of the Seine from longtime New York Times foreign correspondent and best-selling author Elaine Sciolino.
by Martin Walker
Published 2010
The first installment in a wonderful new series that follows the exploits of Benoît Courrèges, a policeman in a small French village where the rituals of the café still rule.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Stone Home
by Crystal Hana Kim
A moving family drama and coming-of-age story revealing a dark corner of South Korean history.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
