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Description and Opinions
Product Description:
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 pavé au poivre, the steak'spink 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 soufflé) 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.
This genre is becoming over crowded 
This is a very light read...maybe too light. While I am sure that Elizabeth Bard is a nice person, I just didn't think that her experiences warranted the telling. Her writing skills are fine but not stellar. The short chapter ending with recipes format didn't seem to work. There wasn't one recipe that made me want to drop the book and head for my kitchen to whip it up. Also, there was often no connections between chapter and recipe.
understanding the Parisiens from a young transplanted American's viewpoint. 
I LOVED this book and lived vicariously through it. However, I bought it for my daughter who is in a similar relationship and felt it would make her understand what her life in Paris might be like. Fun and easy reading but with depth and insite into the differences between the American way of thinking and the French viewpoint.
I loved it.
What a fun book. I love her recipes. I made her yogurt cake w/ fresh raspberries. Yum. I can't wait to try more of them.
enjoyed the book 
One the very few books that gives an honest and realistic view of the differences between the two cultures and mindsets. Having both cultures in my family, I appreciated her views due to the fact that it is very much in line with what I have observed myself. I was a little disappointed in some of the books I have read recently (about the French etc...) that had a very obscure view about the French which I find very unrealistic and untrue.
This is an easy and fast read. I can't wait to try the recipes in this book! They sound delicious!!
some cheese with that whine? 
A whiny professional student moves to Paris and frets about trials such as attending cocktail parties, not being able to find canned chicken broth, and working exhausting three-hour days at the Louvre (followed by a leisurely lunch out). When I got to the part about her stepfather taking out loans and paying her credit card bills so that she could maintain her Parisian lifestyle, I had to stop reading. Her petty gripes and sense of entitlement ruined what could have been a wonderful story about a cross-cultural relationship. Tant pis.
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