Justin Spring and THE GOURMANDS' WAY
For those readers who grew up during the French-influenced, American food revolution of the 70s, spearheaded by Alice Waters at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse , Kermit Lynch of Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant and Danny Meyer of the Union Square Cafe, who sourced at the Union Square Greenmarket, site of a former “needle park,” this book will be a revelation.
And for this of us who grew up believing that French cuisine meant that your salad drowned in bottled “French” dressing followed the main course, it will be a chance to revisit the personalities that shaped our understanding of French cuisine.
Julia Child who demystified French cooking, Alexis Lichine who introduced French wines to an American public that preferred whiskey and cocktails, M.F.K. Fisher who penned elegant prose in support of her passion for French food and Iowan Richard Olney who discovered Provence, Domaine Tempier and befriended and assisted Kermit Lynch in his quest to bring affordable, small production wines to American tables.
When did you first become interested in French cuisine?
I’ve been curious about French cuisine since my high school days in New York, when I studied French language. This was back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, when French cuisine was still fashionable there. I would go out on dates to affordable little French restaurants like La Fondue or La Bonne Soupe.
At roughly the same time I remember New York Magazine ran a feature on some of the dishes being presented at André Soltner’s famed New York restaurant, Lutèce, featuring photos of the dishes as presented by that restaurant. I had never seen food like it before, and had never imagined food could look so beautiful or delicious. So that is how French cuisine came into my life.
My interest in French cuisine and fine dining grew when I first traveled to Europe right after college. I had a friend who let me stay on her sofa on the Île St. Louis, and as a thank you I would take her out to dinner at whatever place she liked. This was 1985, the dollar was very strong, and we had some very good meals together as a result! It all seemed very glamorous and other-worldly — not just the food, but the entire experience of going to a fine restaurant, seeing other people, and being treated so kindly by the waiters, wine captain and so forth. Simultaneously, I became aware (in the way that any backpacker does) that the basic foods available in French markets were a lot better tasting than anything I had known in New York: fruits, cheeses, breads, wines, oysters…I felt surprised by food at every turn. That sense of surprise continued as I traveled through Italy, Switzerland, and Germany…but the surprise and delight were strongest in France.
What was the genesis of this book?
It’s complicated, because the book developed out of many different interests and preoccupations. My previous book, SECRET HISTORIAN, features some interesting sections on Paris in the 1950s and 1960s — Samuel Steward was a friend of Alice Toklas, and I found though my research that I loved her writing and her mind. I had read the ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK years earlier, but then when I re-read it, and learned more about its success and the circumstances of its creation, it started me thinking. So did Richard Olney’s memoir REFLEXIONS, but in a different way. And I had known and loved his SIMPLE FRENCH FOOD for years before I read his memoir.
I went to live in Paris for a year in 2009, thinking I’d research and write about American expatriates of 1950s Left Bank Paris, including blacklisted screenwriters, jazz musicians, novelists and activists. But by then I had noticed that so many food writers I loved best had all been in Paris at roughly the same time. So I changed gears and change projects, now imagining a book about Paris and food/wine writing of the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s — a group biography that would consider these gastronomes as seriously as any literary writers and avant-garde artists.
You write about Alexander Watt , Paris Cuisine and Paris Bistro Cookery, two titles that may have established the template for future restaurant guides
Yes, those are delightful books. There are many restaurant guides to Paris that predate them — Paul Child was buying and reading restaurant guides when he lived in Paris in the 1920s, for example, and the GUIDE MICHELIN goes back much further, as does Curnonsky and Rouff’s LA FRANCE GASTRONOMIQUE — but Watt’s books are specifically designed for the English-speaking reader and they gently lead that reader through the Parisian restaurant-going experience, which is a culturally specific experience, something very different from anything a person of that period would ever have experienced in the USA. The books also include recipes for each restaurant listed. I can’ think of any restaurant guides of today that take the same approach (which ones are you thinking of?), but it’s an approach that I do like very much.
Why six writers and what criteria did you use to make the selections?
These were the six writers that most intrigued me personally, and that I loved to read. Each seemed to me to have done something really remarkable. The fact that they all did such very different things from one another seemed good so far as the book was concerned. The difference in ages also appealed to me — they range from an old lady (Toklas) to a young artist (Olney). And that they all came from such different walks of life seemed important, too, since cooking well and/or eating well happens at all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum. The fact that the six all lived close to one another, went to the same restaurants, read the same books, took the same trips into the French countryside — that also seemed to me remarkable.
Talk briefly about each of the six and what motivated them to establish careers in gastronomic literature? For example, Julia’s first meal in France.
A.J. Liebling was a reporter and war correspondent who loved food and wrote about it with great enthusiasm. He was stationed in Paris during the opening months of World War II and returned for the liberation of Paris. During the 1950s he wrote a series of slightly surreal humor pieces for The New Yorker on his food experiences in Paris which were later gathered together into his enduring classic, BETWEEN MEALS: AN APPETITE FOR PARIS. Alice Toklas arrived in Paris in 1907, and she lived with Gertrude Stein until Stein died in 1946. She wrote her cookbook-memoir THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK, in part to tell her version of the story of their life together — something that Stein had already done in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. Julia Child moved to Paris with her husband, who had a job with the US Government, and studied cooking at the Cordon Bleu. She partnered with two French women (Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle) to revise their draft of the cookbook that ultimately became MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. Richard Olney was a painter and intellectual who fell into cooking and wine -- first as a hobby, then as a passion, and finally as a writer and teacher. Alexis Lichine was an ambitious young wine merchant who convinced America that French wines — and specifically his French wines — were the best available. And M.F.K. Fisher was a novelist, essayist, magazine writer and storyteller who described her passion for good food and drink in nearly everything she wrote.
What is the state of French cooking in America today?
The nationwide American fascination with French haute cuisine seems to me to be a thing of the past. There are not many great French restaurants left in New York, and very few moderately priced or inexpensive French restaurants. People don’t talk about it or care about French cuisine as they used to. At the same time the French influence is everywhere — and fine French dishes can be had in many restaurants that would never describe themselves as French.
What are the ten book that must be on the kitchen bookshelf of home cooks?
Nothing “must” be on everyone’s kitchen bookshelf. A good home cook finds his or her own way to cook and does so in any way that he or she likes best, using the cookbooks or other sources (friends, family, the internet) that resonate most strongly with his or her own aesthetic. Curiosity, exploration, seeking out information and technique, and ultimately engaging in thoughtful improvisation are all part of the cooking process far more than any one book. That being said, a few solid reference works are good to keep on hand. But what those reference works might be depends on the style of cooking one practices.
