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| Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City's 102 Best Restaurants | 
 enlarge | Author: Alexander Lobrano
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $9.02
You Save: $6.98 (44%)
New (32) Used (7) from $9.02
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 14172
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0812976835
Dewey Decimal Number: 647.9544361
EAN: 9780812976830
ASIN: 0812976835
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
WHEN IN PARIS. . . .
If you’re passionate about eating well during your next trip to Paris, you couldn’t ask for a better travel companion than Alexander Lobrano’s charming, friendly, and authoritative Hungry for Paris, the first new comprehensive guide in many years to the city’s restaurant scene. Lobrano, Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent, has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. Here he shares his personal selection of the city’s 102 best restaurants, each of which is portrayed in savvy, fun, lively descriptions that are not only indispensable for finding a superb meal but a pleasure to read.
Lobrano reveals the hottest young chefs, the coziest bistros, the best buys–including those haute cuisine restaurants that are really worth the money–and the secret places Parisians love most, together with information on the most delicious dishes, ambience, clientele, and history of each restaurant. A series of delightful essays cover various aspects of dining in Paris, including “Table for One” (how to eat alone), “The Four Seasons” (the best of seasonal eating in Paris), and “Eating the Unspeakable” (learning to eat what you don’t think you like). All restaurants are keyed to helpful maps, and the book is seasoned with beautiful photographs by Life magazine photographer Bob Peterson that will only help whet your appetite for tasting Paris.
Praise for Hungry for Paris:
"Every time I go to Paris I call Alec and ask him where to eat. Nobody else has such an intimate knowledge of what is going on in the Paris food world right this minute, and there is nobody I trust more to tell me all the latest news. Happily, Alec has written it all down in this wonderful book and now I can stop bothering him." –Ruth Reichl
"Hungry for Paris is a brilliant book with an almost fatal flaw: the writing is so enchanting you may never leave home to go to any of Alec’s favorite places. Few people know,love and appreciate Paris restaurants the way Alec does; no one writes about them better or with more charm." --Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking From My Home to Yours
“When I was nineteen, I went to France to study, but instead, I just ate. The experience changed me: I came back to the United States, and a few years later, started Chez Panisse. In Hungry for Paris, Alec Lobrano describes his own gastronomic awakening, probably better than I could! This book is a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.”
–Alice Waters
“I dearly hope Monsieur Lobrano has an unlisted phone number, for his book will make readers more than merely hungry for the culinary riches of his adopted city; it will make them ravenous for a dining companion with his particular warmth, wry charm, and refreshingly pure joie de vivre. Lobrano is a sly raconteur, a respectful critic, and the very best kind of insider--one who genuinely longs to share all his best discoveries.”
–Julia Glass, author of The Whole World Over and Three Junes
“Organized by neighborhood and interspersed with delightful sections on such matters as eating alone. . . . This is the sort of guide you read before you go to Paris… Lobrano tells you what to expect and how to act.”-Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Lobrano . . . fleshes out his luscious prose with tempting photos. Hungry for Paris is like a cozy bistro on a chilly day: It makes you feel welcome.”
-Washington Post Book World
“Le Grand Vfour. Maxim's. La Table de Jol Robuchon. None of these venerated restaurants are on Lobrano's list of the 102 best in Paris. And that's one of the reasons I love Hungry for Paris.”-Gridskipper
“A treasure trove of 102 mostly undiscovered addresses… Small and innovative bistros get the lion's share of Lobrano's ink, interspersed with chapters that are autobiographical, informative and entertaining.”-Women’s Wear Daily
“Lobrano is an ideal guide because he remembers who he was, how he became the expert he is now, and how you can acquire expertise. And he can do that hard thing --- see what's in front of him.”- HeadButler.com
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Almost as much fun --- almost --- as dining in Paris April 21, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Dollar skidding, plane fare soaring --- it's not likely I'll be having dinner in Paris any time soon.
But that doesn't mean I can't eat in Paris by proxy. Naturally, the lucky stiff who's having the meals I'm missing is an American --- someone with an expatriate's appreciation of culinary greatness. This person can write as well as he/she can enjoy the handiwork of a fine chef. And, finally, this gourmet can appreciate the value of the dollar.
On the basis of Hungry for Paris, Alexander Lobrano is my Paris rep.
He's so American: "My first visit was in August 1972, en famille, with my parents, two brothers and sister. We stayed at a now-vanished hotel just off the Champs Elysees and every day began with a glass of warm TANG, which my late father mixed up in the bathroom water glasses, as a bit of thrift."
Lobrano is an ideal guide because he remembers who he was, how he became the expert he is now, and how you can acquire expertise. And he can do that hard thing --- see what's in front of him: "The French never drink Perrier with meals because they think its large bubbles make it too gaseous to go well with food." He has a good ear for the quotable restaurant owner: "Come on, eat! Go ahead! I'm going to charge you a lot of money, you know!" He can let it rip: "A heavy rain filled the gutters with bronze-covered chestnut leaves last night, and the city is suddenly the city is nude." And, above all, he has an awareness of ultimate goodness: "It is hard to imagine a better lunch than a creamy wedge of Camembert smeared on a torn hunk of crackle-crusted baguette and a glass of red wine."
But, eat in restaurants he must, so he's off to 102 of his Paris favorites. Some of them are mine, too. Most, refreshingly, are not. And, refreshingly, he's not shy about explaining his enthusiasms. Le Pamphlet: "the best risotto in Paris." L'Alcazar: "better service, better lighting and a more cosmopolitan menu" than La Coupole. L'Epi Dupin, which he hears about from "the nice lady at the post office." Le Florimond serves his beloved stuffed cabbage "in a pool of brown gravy so lush it had already skeined on its way to the table."
Reputation means nothing. Neither does atmosphere. Lobrano is all about what's on the plate. L'Ami Louis is "for high rollers more interested in a brand-name experience than good food." Bofinger's "beautiful decor...can't compensate for the kitchen's mediocrity." Le Divellec is "stuffy...and exorbitantly expensive."
Even if you never go to Paris, this book is wonderfully educational. I've seen aligot on a menu; I didn't know that the whipped potatoes are mixed with Tomme de Laguiole cheese and garlic until they have "the texture of molten latex." Joel Robuchon makes spaghetti carbonara with Alsatian bacon and creme fraiche --- I'll try that at home. And more, and more, until the meal fantasies merge and I have to...well, if truth be told, I need to pour a small glass of red wine, tear off a hunk of baguette and slather it with cheese.
Alexander Lobrano serves up gastro-porn of the highest order.
 don't waste your money May 11, 2008
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
I bought this book for a trip to Paris based on a very positive Washington Post review. I bought it to use as a Parisian restaurant guide; I did not find it very useful at all. It is more like a travel essay than a restaurant guide. If you want to experience Parisian restaurants without actually going there, this book may be for you. But if you are planning a trip to Paris and want a restaurant guide, don't buy this book. The author spends a lot of time describing diners who were at the restaurant while he was there. Also, he includes restaurants whose food he found "good" or merely "better-than-average." I had expected to find reviews of 100 restaurants with excellent food -- after all, there are probably thousands of such restaurants in Paris -- but a lot of the reviews in this guide did not seem to be of restaurants the author recommended. I guess to be fair some of the essays are interesting, but I would have preferred more focus on the restaurants and their food, rather than on the author's experiences in eating at these restaurants.
if you buy one guide book on Paris restaurants, buy this one! April 15, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Finally, a book on Paris restaurants that is a pleasure to read and informative! I have been going to France for thirty years, am a French teacher, and often take my students to France (I'm going soon and Lobrano's book is in my carry-on!) Lobrano is an experienced writer and food lover and gives his wonderfully irreverent opinions on a wide range of Parisian restaurants. There are also several fabulous essays! This book will be the one to have and cherish for years to come. I am already waiting for Lobrano's next book on Paris. Until then, bon appetit!
The next Patricia Wells May 17, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
20 some years ago Patricia Wells' Food Lovers Guide to Paris changed my approach to dining in Paris, but that source has been woefully absent for some time. Hungry for Paris now has pride of place on my travel bookshelf. First, the writing is so good you almost feel like you're there - and you can only read two or three reviews at a time, because you get too hungry. Face it, Paris is wonderful, but it's full of crap restaurants. If you don't know where to go, you have a 96% chance of being disappointed. This book will keep that from happening. There are choices from casual to haute cuisine, and the accuracy of the reviews of the places I've been makes it clear that the book is thoroughly written and trustworthy.
I loved this book! May 10, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I loved this book, and recommend it to any food lover who is either planning or dreaming about dining out in Paris.
Alec Lobrano is a superb writer and a well-seasoned gourmand, who shares his love and knowledge of delicious French cuisine and great chefs in his own inimitable style. He takes you on a first-class tour inside the best restaurants in Paris as if you were his dinner companion, and lets you taste and experience, albeit vicariously, its finest French and international cuisines and the perfect wines to enjoy with each sampling. .
This book reads like a autobiographical novel, filled with charming, and often amusing, short stories chronicling this world famous gourmet's earliest memories of "eating anything specifically described as French, - the eclairs my mother bought at the A&P supermarket in Westport, CT,... long soggy pastries shaped like hot dog rolls" and "heat-and-serve" frozen croissants, to the canned Vichyssoise , French toast, and beef burgundy stews she made at home, to his savory descriptions of his first experience at age 11, in a real French restaurant, Le Charles V, on the east side of Manhattan, which made him "rabidly anxious to get at some more French food."
Lobrano chronicles his first trips to France with his family and his adolescent awakening to the gastronomic joys of French cuisine, - and the development of his palate as he "ascended the pyramid of French gastronomy and discovered some spectacular food at its higher altitudes," and finding in the end - or at the top of his list - that "it is bistro food, or rustic cooking with deep roots in the various regional kitchens of France, that remains the blessedly eternal bedrock of the French kitchen."
Like a chef, Lobrano describes the ingredients, the preparations, the cooking and serving of the most favored, and simplest, meals of the French people, and also takes us out to dine at the most expensive, moderate, and least expensive restaurants where good French food is always served. His stories about chefs and French celebrities are written with an elegant style of one who has been invited to all the best parties in Paris.
Hungry for Paris is not just a guide book for dining out in Paris, but a veritable masterpiece on the history and culture of French cuisine,
This is a classic!
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