Customer Reviews

Found Meals of the Lost Generation: Recipes and Anecdotes from 1920's Paris

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This wonderful book - that reads like a fine collection of short stories - makes Paris in the heyday of its expatriate invasion come alive like no other I've read. Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald at al lived and wrote and feuded in Paris like nobody else ever will again, but what they ate is still there and available to us all. The food and its aromas that rise out of the pages of this charming, beautifully written book send me back to that time and place like the most vivid time machine. Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter is as authoritive with her food as she is with her Lost Parisans, and her book will go with me the next time I go to Paris. Meanwhile it brings a heady whiff of Paris home to me.

Dynamic, and conceptually unique, this book is filled with fascinating anecdotes, quotes, and recipes from the likes of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Rousseau and on... For, "Living one's art" was a commonplace philosophy for many of the lengends (and some obscures) who are included in this charming book. Food, drink and love! (Joyce's oysters and Jimmie's aphrodisiac) What better kindling for inspiration is there?

I give this book the highest rating because of the wonderful anecdotes and recipes chosen by Ms. Rodriguez-Hunter. Paris and France in this era are favorite reading topics and I appreciate the creative mind that put these delightful chapters together. The chicken and morel dish was such a hit with my friends, I substituted oven-dried tomatoes for fresh and got an astoundingly rich flavor in the sauce. I can't wait to work my way through more recipes.

By all means, read this book for the recipes, but that is all it is, a cookbook. Don't read it for the narrative. For an author who claims to want to share her love of a generation, she knows precious little about it. One would think she would have read more. The number of factual errors is astounding. Irritating. Where is Dorothy Parker? Where are the biscuits and toppings and dry sherry made so famous by the Murphy's? Although the food is mentioned time and again in the many biographies, it is nice to read the actual recipes, except for Zelda's, which she had penned herself. Not worth it.