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Food and Friends
by Serge Dansereau

When the huge and beautiful Food and Friends arrived, I was embarrassed. It looked so much like a coffee table book.

As I read the preface, doubts began to disappear.After reading the first three short chapters, I had run to mark the exact location of three must-visit locations on my portable book of Paris streetmaps.

Food and Friends is written by a thinker, a modest man whose greatest pleasure on visiting Paris is to go shopping for food in the markets for meals he will cook himself at a friend's private apartment. Because he is a professional chef, wildly and deeply interested in the history and preparation of meals, his account of an ordinary food shopping trip is also wildly and deeply interesting.

And because he is authentic and kind, as he is writing one thoughtful paragraph after another he gives you the french names for foods, along with their translation into english.

After Paris, Serge Dansereau visits friends in Champagne, Alsace, Chablis. He also spends several days with his friend Anna Willan at her chateau in Burgundy, where she runs the great cooking school La Varenne.

I can't say enough good things about this book, except to note that it also comes with recipes. Abandon restraint and Take a two-month food tour of France and Italy with Serge Dansereau, chef of Sydney's five-star Regent Hotel restaurant. Read the descriptions of these meals out loud to someone you know who loves food, and laugh happily as you hear them moan in pleasure.

reviewed June 26 2000