Lunch in Paris

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard

Nonfiction - Memoir

22010 Little, Brown and Company

Finished on July 22, 2022

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

In Paris for a weekend visit, Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman--and never went home again. Was it love at first sight? Or was it the way her knife slid effortlessly through her pave au poivre, the steak's pink juices puddling into the buttery pepper sauce?

Lunch In Paris is a memoir about a young American woman caught up in two passionate love affairs--one with her new beau, Gwendal, the other with French cuisine. Packing her bags for a new life in the world's most romantic city, Elizabeth is plunged into a world of bustling open-air markets, hipster bistros, and size 2 femmes fatales. She learns to gut her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen), soothe pangs of homesickness (with the rise of a chocolate souffle) and develops a crush on her local butcher (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Dillon). Elizabeth finds that the deeper she immerses herself in the world of French cuisine, the more Paris itself begins to translate. French culture, she discovers, is not unlike a well-ripened cheese-there may be a crusty exterior, until you cut through to the melting, piquant heart. Peppered with mouth-watering recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare and molten chocolate cakes, Lunch in Paris is a story of falling in love, redefining success and discovering what it truly means to be at home. In the delicious tradition of memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, this book is the perfect treat for anyone who has dreamed that lunch in Paris could change their life.

I love a good memoir, especially one that include travel ideas and recipes. Lunch in Paris has been languishing on my Nook for a few years and I just happened to notice it after I made up my list for the Paris in July reading challenge. Having given up on a few books from that list, I decided to give Elizabeth Bard's memoir a go. I was not disappointed, and yet it didn't resonate with me as much as Eloisa James' memoir, Paris in Love, which I read (and loved) in 2012. I shared a half dozen passages (and marked dozens more) from Paris in Love, but didn't find anything notable in Bard's memoir. I enjoyed her story of falling in love with her husband (and France), and will probably go on to read her follow-up books (Picnic in Provence and Dinner Chez Moi), but I'm not chomping at the bit to buy a print edition of Lunch in Paris for my keeper shelf. I am, however, tempted to curl up with Paris in Love, which deserves a second reading.