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Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City's 102 Best Restaurants | 
| Author: Alexander Lobrano
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $9.81
You Save: $6.19 (39%)
New (27) Used (3) from $9.81
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 3636
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0812976835
Dewey Decimal Number: 647.9544361
EAN: 9780812976830
ASIN: 0812976835
Publication Date: April 15, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20080511231132H
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Product Description
WHEN IN PARIS. . . .
If you’re passionate about eating well during your next trip to Paris, you couldn’t ask for a better travel companion than Alexander Lobrano’s charming, friendly, and authoritative Hungry for Paris, the first new comprehensive guide in many years to the city’s restaurant scene. Lobrano, Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent, has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. Here he shares his personal selection of the city’s 102 best restaurants, each of which is portrayed in savvy, fun, lively descriptions that are not only indispensable for finding a superb meal but a pleasure to read.
Lobrano reveals the hottest young chefs, the coziest bistros, the best buys–including those haute cuisine restaurants that are really worth the money–and the secret places Parisians love most, together with information on the most delicious dishes, ambience, clientele, and history of each restaurant. A series of delightful essays cover various aspects of dining in Paris, including “Table for One” (how to eat alone), “The Four Seasons” (the best of seasonal eating in Paris), and “Eating the Unspeakable” (learning to eat what you don’t think you like). All restaurants are keyed to helpful maps, and the book is seasoned with beautiful photographs by Life magazine photographer Bob Peterson that will only help whet your appetite for tasting Paris.
Praise for Hungry for Paris:
"Every time I go to Paris I call Alec and ask him where to eat. Nobody else has such an intimate knowledge of what is going on in the Paris food world right this minute, and there is nobody I trust more to tell me all the latest news. Happily, Alec has written it all down in this wonderful book and now I can stop bothering him." –Ruth Reichl
"Hungry for Paris is a brilliant book with an almost fatal flaw: the writing is so enchanting you may never leave home to go to any of Alec’s favorite places. Few people know,love and appreciate Paris restaurants the way Alec does; no one writes about them better or with more charm." --Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking From My Home to Yours
“When I was nineteen, I went to France to study, but instead, I just ate. The experience changed me: I came back to the United States, and a few years later, started Chez Panisse. In Hungry for Paris, Alec Lobrano describes his own gastronomic awakening, probably better than I could! This book is a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.”
–Alice Waters
“I dearly hope Monsieur Lobrano has an unlisted phone number, for his book will make readers more than merely hungry for the culinary riches of his adopted city; it will make them ravenous for a dining companion with his particular warmth, wry charm, and refreshingly pure joie de vivre. Lobrano is a sly raconteur, a respectful critic, and the very best kind of insider--one who genuinely longs to share all his best discoveries.”
–Julia Glass, author of The Whole World Over and Three Junes
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 don't waste your money May 11, 2008
I bought this book for a trip to Paris based on a very positive Washington Post review. I bought it to use as a Parisian restaurant guide; I did not find it very useful at all. It is more like a travel essay than a restaurant guide. If you want to experience Parisian restaurants without actually going there, this book may be for you. But if you are planning a trip to Paris and want a restaurant guide, don't buy this book. The author spends a lot of time describing diners who were at the restaurant while he was there. Also, he includes restaurants whose food he found "good" or merely "better-than-average." I had expected to find reviews of 100 restaurants with excellent food -- after all, there are probably thousands of such restaurants in Paris -- but a lot of the reviews in this guide did not seem to be of restaurants the author recommended. I guess to be fair some of the essays are interesting, but I would have preferred more focus on the restaurants and their food, rather than on the author's experiences in eating at these restaurants.
 I loved this book! May 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved this book, and recommend it to any food lover who is either planning or dreaming about dining out in Paris.
Alec Lobrano is a superb writer and a well-seasoned gourmand, who shares his love and knowledge of delicious French cuisine and great chefs in his own inimitable style. He takes you on a first-class tour inside the best restaurants in Paris as if you were his dinner companion, and lets you taste and experience, albeit vicariously, its finest French and international cuisines and the perfect wines to enjoy with each sampling. .
This book reads like a autobiographical novel, filled with charming, and often amusing, short stories chronicling this world famous gourmet's earliest memories of "eating anything specifically described as French, - the eclairs my mother bought at the A&P supermarket in Westport, CT,... long soggy pastries shaped like hot dog rolls" and "heat-and-serve" frozen croissants, to the canned Vichyssoise , French toast, and beef burgundy stews she made at home, to his savory descriptions of his first experience at age 11, in a real French restaurant, Le Charles V, on the east side of Manhattan, which made him "rabidly anxious to get at some more French food."
Lobrano chronicles his first trips to France with his family and his adolescent awakening to the gastronomic joys of French cuisine, - and the development of his palate as he "ascended the pyramid of French gastronomy and discovered some spectacular food at its higher altitudes," and finding in the end - or at the top of his list - that "it is bistro food, or rustic cooking with deep roots in the various regional kitchens of France, that remains the blessedly eternal bedrock of the French kitchen."
Like a chef, Lobrano describes the ingredients, the preparations, the cooking and serving of the most favored, and simplest, meals of the French people, and also takes us out to dine at the most expensive, moderate, and least expensive restaurants where good French food is always served. His stories about chefs and French celebrities are written with an elegant style of one who has been invited to all the best parties in Paris.
Hungry for Paris is not just a guide book for dining out in Paris, but a veritable masterpiece on the history and culture of French cuisine,
This is a classic!
Finally, a Paris dining guide that has integrity and is actually a great read May 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Paris is an easy mark for all the hacks in the world. I know, I lived in Paris for 20 years, and read countless
"guide books" that were nothing more then re-cycled press releases and re-hashed blurbs stolen from other
guide books. But this author, Alec Lobrano, is the rare combination of a great food and restaurant expert and a great writer. Though it has lots of up to date practical information, this book's real pleasure is as a bed-side literary journey into the heart and soul of Paris' foodie culture. It's the real deal, and I'll bet even Alec's anglophone French readers would agree. Even if you're not planning a trip to Paris, well worth the read for any
Francophile day-dreamer. It leaves me hungry for more, and I'll be looking for Lobrano's next book, no matter what the subject.
Great Book ....It's my guide and I know Paris! May 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
You can't help but sense Lobrano's passion about every morsel of food he's eaten, as well as his distain when he's been disappointed. He's one of the lucky ones who have been able to convert a passion into a profession. Lobrano is Gourmet's Magazine's European correspondent and has written for nearly every major food and travel magazine since 1986 when he moved to Paris.
But his love of good food started long before he became a Parisian. Lobrano was a gourmet by nature and critiqued food when he was a child living in Connecticut. His book's introduction recounts his first French meal in Manhattan when Alec before he was shaved. When his parents took him to France when he was in his teens, he returned to the US never imagining that he'd end up in Paris assigned to live, eat and write for a living.
His book, "Hungry For Paris - The Ultimate Guide to the City's 102 Best Restaurants" guides readers as if they are his close and dear friends. If you intend to eat in Paris, he is the masterful mentor, an insider who will show you not only where to eat but how to approach the meal. He also shares his tips about ordering wine and says there's no sin to ordering the restaurant's house wine. But skip the pre-dinner whiskey. It will only deaden your palate and add euros to your bill.
Alec shares his first-hand expertise about what diners should and shouldn't be looking for when going out. He takes readers by the hand and gives them a fast track course in restaurant mores much in the same way Emily Post might have done. You can hear her admonitions that you shouldn't raise your voice or wave your hands to attract a waiter's attention.
This is a MUST BUY book .. even if you're not Paris bound. It's a great read.
my dinner with alec May 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Alexander Lobrano (Alec) has re-invented the guide book with his new thriller Hungry for Paris. Each listing not only describes the restaurant and the food, but tells a small story about the dining partner. In doing so, the evening comes more alive and you too feel that it could be you, lucky enough to be dining out with Alec...in Paris, bien sur. This is a classic for food lovers and guide book readers and all in love with Paris.
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