First published 2009
David Lebovitz arrives in Paris with three suitcases and high hopes after dreaming of living there since the 1980s. The New York Times bestselling author of My Paris Kitchen has left behind his nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author to start fresh in the Bastille neighborhood. He quickly learns that life en France operates by different rules. Social conduct follows ironclad guidelines. Shopkeepers seem determined not to sell anything. Men's footwear presents mysterious choices. Cheese plates demand proper etiquette. Banks refuse to make change for a one-euro difference. Lebovitz finds himself dressing up to take out garbage and considering cartoon-character dress socks. Through these absurd daily encounters, he slowly transforms into un vrai parisien. The book includes over fifty original recipes ranging from Pork Loin with Brown Sugar-Bourbon Glaze to Chocolate-Coconut Marshmallows. Lebovitz delivers a funny and irreverent portrait of adapting to Parisian life, complete with all its maddening contradictions and unexpected charms.
Genres: humor, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, cooking, 21st-century, france, food-and-drink
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, personal-growth
Setting: Bastille, Paris
Period: 1980s, 21st-century
256 pages · Kindle Edition · Broadway Books