About book The Perfect Meal: In Search Of The Lost Tastes Of France (2013)
I almost gave up on this book on page 33 where Baxter misspells the name of French politician Jean Jaurès as Juarès not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES on the same page. The fourth time, it's spelled correctly, so clearly this is just horribly bad editing. But I continued to read anyway. The book is a delightful culinary romp through France, every bit as educational and entertaining as Baxter always is. Most of the food described is a little outside the realm of normal tastes nowadays, so I'm not sure the book made me hungry, but the chapter on coffee definitely left me dreaming of café terrace. Compared to the other John Baxter books I've read, I'd rank this one above "We'll Always Have Paris" but below "The Most Beautiful Walk in the World." Baxter is at it again, taking up knife and fork on our behalf. This time he is traversing the French hexagon in search of The Perfect Meal-a banquet of lost and unusual recipes, Along the way he savors a whole roast ox-no, not the entire ox, pintade à l’Escoffier and some items that seem to only appear in The New York Times crossword puzzle-lamprey.John Baxter’s The Perfect Meal is part grand tour of France, part history of French cuisine, taking readers on a journey to discover and savor some of the world’s great cultural achievements before they disappear completely.
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A fun trip through a fantasy quintessential French banquet
—bookworm
