Moveable Feasts
A Story of Paris in Twenty Meals
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A rising-star food writer takes the reader on a gastronomic adventure around Paris to indulge in its irresistible melting-pot of cuisines.
Paris has a justifiable claim to be the center of European gastronomy—but beyond its trademark terrasses and zinc-topped tables, what can its cuisine tell us about the city? Chris Newens, an award-winning food writer and long-time resident of the historic slaughterhouse quartier Villette, takes us on a delightful gastronomic journey around Paris' twenty spiralling arrondissements, seeking out, sampling, and attempting to recreate a dish that represents each as it is today.
Hemingway wrote that "wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” From Congolese cat fish in the 18th to Middle Eastern falafels in the 4th, to the charcuterie served at the libertine nightclubs of Pigalle in the 9th, Newens lifts the lid on the city's ever-changing, defining, and irresistible food culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Food writer Newens (Cash and Curry) takes a charming tour of Paris by way of its rich and varied cuisines. After living in the city for 10 years and realizing "the Paris I could truly say I knew was embarrassingly small," he set out to visit each of its 20 arrondissements and learn to make a dish that represented the history and cultural makeup of each one. What he found was a mix of fusion fare and stubborn tradition. In the 17th district, for example, he learned the arduous process of making a croissant, a pastry that existed "long before" the area was overrun by the current concentration of "bourgeois bohemian" inhabitants. In district 10, where farmers protested government efforts to cut food prices in the 2010s, he recreated the tartiflette, a hearty casserole eaten by both police and protesters. Newens also recalls being introduced to district 13's Vietnamese communities, who, he contends, make the city's best banh mi, a fusion food created after a wave of migrants from France moved to Saigon in the 1950s. Through his travels, Newens came to see the city as a place where French culinary tradition serves as the glue uniting disparate global influences. The result is a colorful portrait of a culturally rich city and its diverse histories.
