The Benjamin Franklin Diet

“A Full Belly is the Mother of all Evil,” Benjamin Franklin counselled the readers of his 1743 edition of Poor Richard’s Continue reading →

Elizabeth David & Coming Home

When Elizabeth David came home to Britain in 1946, after spending the war years in Egypt, her agonies from the the flavorless diet she Continue reading →

Robert Burns Night à Paris

Gertrude Stein famously wrote that a writer has to have two countries, “the one where they belong and the one Continue reading →

Legendary Paris Dinner Parties

Scads of American memoirists have rhapsodized about their wonderful meals in Paris’s restaurants, but Janet Flanner, who for decades wrote Continue reading →

Damn recipe for chicken à la Maryland

  Nicole Diver, the anti-heroine of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final novel, Tender is the Night (1934), first appears in its pages Continue reading →

Égalité of the stomach, at least

Outside every public school in Paris the French flag flies above the door and the lintel is engraved with the Continue reading →

Consuming the Paris Commune

A few days ago, strolling goggle-eyed through the glitz and glam of Bon Marché, Paris’s ultra-upscale department store, I passed Continue reading →

The Rapture of Spring

In French there is an expression, sabrer le champagne, which means to open a bottle of champagne with a sabre. Before last Continue reading →