Customer Reviews

Gourmet Paris

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I'm planning a restaurant-centered trip to Paris for next spring, and am finding this little book an invaluable tool in my research efforts. The author has laboriously evaluated dozens if not hundreds of Parisian restaurants in terms of their execution of various regional cuisines and specialties. For example, if you're looking for a restaurant that specializes in the cooking of Lyon or the Auvergne, he'll have numerous recommendations--many of them small and off the beaten path, and unremarked-on even by the Paris Zagat guide, let alone Frommer or Patricia Wells. By the same token, if you simply must try a dish of aligot, pouchouse, or tablier de sapeur--because you've read about them in Elizabeth David or Waverley Root--you'll be steered directly to them. The book is small enough to carry in one's pocket while walking around the city, and contains enough information about the recommended restaurants (opening hours, phone, other specialties) to make ad hoc planning reasonably simple. Indexes by restaurant name and arrondisement are well put together. All in all, a valuable contribution to the small body of truly useful Paris restaurant guides in English.

This book is fabulous - witty, well-written and containing all the must-have addresses for the best food in Paris. It's different from other restaurant guides because instead of picking an area or a price-range for your meal, you just choose the dish you feel like eating. So for example if you want some Bouillabaisse you look it up and there are four recommendations, each of which will serve up their own delicious version of the Marseillaise speciality.

The guide covers eighty different dishes, both French and International - you can find places for sushi, tacos and curry as well as for pot-au-feu, fondue and coq-au-vin. The author, Emmanuel Rubin is great not only at choosing the finest food but also the places with the best atmosphere. He devotes a section at the end of the book to a guide to restaurants with special features; restaurants with a fireplace, restaurants for kids, restaurants in nightclubs...

Gourmet Paris is definitely the best present I've received since moving to France; I've been using the guide regularly every time I feel like eating out and I've had nothing but great meals since !