Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780865472365)

New Yorker staff writer A.J. Liebling recalls his Parisian apprenticeship in the fine art of eating in this charming memoir, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris.

"There would come a time when, if I had compared my life to a cake, the sojourns in Paris would have presented the chocolate filling. The intervening layers were plain sponge."

In his nostalgic review of his Rabelaisian initiation into life's finer pleasures, Liebling celebrates the richness and variety of French food, fondly recalling great meals and memorable wines. He writes with awe and a touch of envy of his friend and mentor Yves Mirande, "one of the last great gastronomes of France," who would dispatch a lunch of "raw Bayonne ham and fresh figs, a hot sausage in crust, spindles of filleted pike in a rich rose sauce Nantua, a leg of lamb larded with anchovies, artichokes on a pedestal of foie gras, and four or five kinds of cheese, with a good bottle of Bordeaux and one of Champagne"--all before beginning to contemplate dinner.

In A.J. Liebling, a great writer and a great eater became one, for he offers readers a rare and bountiful feast in this delectable book.

With an introduction by James Salter, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of A Sport and a Pastime

Author: A. J. Liebling
ISBN-10: 086547236X
ISBN-13: 9780865472365
Publisher: North Point Press
Language: English
Published: 09/29/2004
Pages: 192
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
New York Review of Books 11/18/2004 pg. 12
New York Times Book Review 03/08/2009 pg. 23