The Sweet Life in Paris
Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City
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Average rating3.7
Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris ever since he first visited the city in the 1980s. Finally, after a nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author, he moved to Paris to start a new life. Having crammed all his worldly belongings into three suitcases, he arrived, hopes high, at his new apartment in the lively Bastille neighborhood. But he soon discovered it's a different world en France.From learning the ironclad rules of social conduct to the mysteries of men's footwear, from shopkeepers who work so hard not to sell you anything to the etiquette of working the right way around the cheese plate, here is David's story of how he came to fall in love with--and even understand--this glorious, yet sometimes maddening, city.When did he realize he had morphed into un vrai parisien? It might have been when he found himself considering a purchase of men's dress socks with cartoon characters on them. Or perhaps the time he went to a bank with 135 euros in hand to make a 134-euro payment, was told the bank had no change that day, and thought it was completely normal. Or when he found himself dressing up to take out the garbage because he had come to accept that in Paris appearances and image mean everything. The more than fifty original recipes, for dishes both savory and sweet, such as Pork Loin with Brown Sugar--Bourbon Glaze, Braised Turkey in Beaujolais Nouveau with Prunes, Bacon and Bleu Cheese Cake, Chocolate-Coconut Marshmallows, Chocolate Spice Bread, Lemon-Glazed Madeleines, and Mocha--Creme Fraiche Cake, will have readers running to the kitchen once they stop laughing. The Sweet Life in Paris is a deliciously funny, offbeat, and irreverent look at the city of lights, cheese, chocolate, and other confections.
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Light, lovely, delicious. David Lebovitz intertwines his experiences and observations of Parisian life with recipes, all of which I would like to stop and cook right now. As a tourist in Paris, there were so many things I missed out on that Lebovitz points out from living there, and it makes me want to go back to Paris with fresh eyes. And eat all the chocolate!
This book was far too bitchy. Cute and funny in the first few chapters, this complainathon swiftly began to grate on me. Some of the tidbits he offered could be useful when traveling to Paris, sure, but I just couldn't enjoy the memoir of Lebovitz's apparent perma-annoyance with the rest of humanity or his subsequent passive aggressive solutions chapter after chapter. The recipes are fun though!
The Sweet Life in Paris is the moving-and-starting-over story of Lebovitz's venture into Parisian life. It's a story we have heard many times before, of the trials of dealing with French bureaucracy, of figuring out how to get service in French stores, and of trying to fit into a world that secretly scorns everything that is not French. Yes, we have heard this story many times before, but it is a story we will never tire of, a story we want to read again and again, until maybe, one day, we tell the story of our own move to this magical place.
I loved how Lebovitz tells how he realized he was finally un vrai parisien. It was not a big day, but a simple day, the day he dressed up to take out his garbage. How we all want to live in a world where everyone dresses up to take out the garbage!
The best part, of course, is David's take on Paris treats. David is, of course, an expert on pastries, so who better to take us around Paris and share pastry gossip?
An absolutely delicious book, filled with stories about those amazing sweets of Paris. With recipes.
