Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes - Cookbook Review

By Elizabeth Bard
(Little, Brown and Company, 2010)

There's not much "praying" and meditating in Lunch in Paris, as there was with Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling account Eat, Pray, Love. But there is certainly a lot of "l'amour" and "manger" (eating), filled as this little memoir is with recipes for delights such as oven-roasted pork ribs with honey; goat cheese, tomato and anchovy tarts; and mussels with white wine and fennel—the latter touted as a "Slimming Summer Recipe."

Lunch in Paris is a playful feel-good book, one you can devour in three nights, while living vicariously through the young protagonist's adventures with love, lust and food, lots of food. Who doesn't feel like just flying up and away to the city of love, and then falling in love with a handsome stranger and the country's incredible edible bounty? It's not quite Julia Child's My Life in France; not even "Child light." It's more like a small, tasty puff pastry treat versus a serious boeuf bourguignon. But so romantique!

Check out Elizabeth Bard's delighful blog, elizabethbard.blogspot.com, where she compares the contents of her fridge in the U.S. with those of her refrigerator in France.

Reviewed by Sylvie Greil