Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes (2024)

Okay. This one is a little tricky for me to write. If you know me, you know that this is a sensitive subject. I have a Masters degree in French and did the hard work and the carte de séjour appointments and the years... YEARS of waiting and longing in between visits to France not knowing if I'd ever go back-- in short, anything other than just "find a French guy".

So, this is a story where the American girl meets the French guy and BEGRUDGINGLY moves to Paris. I'm crying for her, really. Everything is so hard to understand! It's cold in the winter! Apartments are small! I have no money because I don't work!

Not only that, but she has a French-speaking husband with a large extended family who live in St. Malo, probably one of the most beautiful spots in France. She has no idea the advantages she has.

But, about halfway through the book, she finally starts to get it and survives all the French bureaucracy and all the cold winters and all the red tape and stays and loves Paris anyway. Loves the market. Loves family meals. Eventually understands that all the weird things about French culture go back to Napoleon and the Revolution and beyond. Finally gets that just breathing the air (no matter how frustrating it all gets) is being a part of something enormous and complicated and special and unique in human history.

So, do I recommend this book, yes. If you have lived in France or speak French, the beginning will be rough, but it's a sweet book and the recipes actually are great. :)

There's a community on Tumblr called Better Book Titles where people post snarky photoshops of book covers. This book inspired my first contribution:

How long before aspirational memories from entitled, self-deluded, white women becomes its own genre? The protracted adventures of global trotting Mary Sues, no longer content with self inserting themselves into fiction they must now self insert into entire cultures where they can act out their ingenue fantasies for all eternity. It's a little sad how saturated the market has been for the last couple years with nearly identical books, sadder still because none of them (including this one) are really bad-- I repeat this is not a bad book! It's just you get to the point where you have so many young white women learning valuable life lessons while charming foreign people trip over themselves to compliment their looks, grant them access to secret "authentic" cultural experiences(TM), give them org*sms and cook magical meals that if eaten every day will push your own happiness to burn off the extra calories.

There's only so many times you can read 'oh I went to college and I'm forced to get a job that's below me in order to pay the bills' before you want to stab people who inject random bits of French into conversations for NO REASON. Just once I'd like to see a book about a young black woman traveling to Europe and finding herself. Or a book about a young woman of any background traveling to some exotic place and meeting her fair share of unsavory, uncharming, unwise, and decidedly unpleasant people.

Okay okay... Let's focus on this book itself. Lunch in Paris is equal parts enjoyable and irritating. Enjoyable because it's an easy read about a life that many of us would love to have: exciting job in London with a Paris lover on the weekends. Lots of food, lots of interesting cultural details, the fantasy of an apartment in an up and coming area of one of the most fantasized about cities. The chapters that are basically fluff are really quite fun to read.

The problem is when Bard tries to move out of the fluff she comes off sounding like a shallow superficial twit enthusiastically lecturing an American audience on our shortcomings. Her thoughts on 9/11 and Iraq War are particularly irritating, mostly because they're delivered in passing with a sort of "of course everyone knows" arrogance that is bound to offend people all over the political spectrum. If you're going to do complex issues, do them. Dipping your toe into something serious and pulling it back out to wibble about the merits of ordering from a true French butcher just makes you look ignorant.

There is a lot of complaining in this book: Americans are wrong here, here and here, but omg why can't the French do this, this or this correctly? To her credit, Bard acknowledges her own flakiness and tries to pass off writing about it as a healthy exercise in self-deprecation. Mmmm... Not quite.

I can't help comparing this book to Memoirs of a Muse: A Novel (which will take me six more months to finish because I only read it in the bath *lol*). Whereas Memoirs is filled with ugly people, bullies, disappointing lovers, selfish decaying relatives and their suitors ... the minor characters in Lunch feel more like accessories. Everyone is beautiful, loving and charming. Not character flaw in sight. And ultimately that's what makes these type of books so contemptible in large doses. No one 'finds themselves' in a perfect, untroubled, supportive environment full of people who adore you. People don't get wiser going through that, they become obsessive navel gazers, self-centered enough to change the tilt of the Earth's axis, fixated on tiny details about their feelings and status. When an author claims to have grown through a series of remarkably pleasant events you can't help but feel that you haven't gotten the full story.

Conclusion: check it out of the library for the beach.

P.S. - BTW, whose idea was it to interrupt the book with recipes? Why would you stop the story to make people read instructions???? Maybe release a companion book, maybe use them as free content for the author's mailing list or website, but for Christ's sake they do not belong in the book!

I really hated this book at first and fully expected to give it a 1-star review (unusual for me). Too pretentious and lacking in intrigue to qualify for decent/fun chick lit, too lacking in poignant stories and interesting details to qualify for a worthy memoir, and too self-absorbed and lacking in cultural observation to be a decent travel novel. These things all seemed true at first, but somewhere in the middle Bard seems to find her story (or maybe I just became accustomed to her rather grating writing voice?) and I found myself empathizing for her as you'd expect to do while reading a decent memoir. And after a rough beginning reeking of ridiculously typical "stuffy, self-righteous American who thinks they're automatically interesting just for spending some time abroad" nonsense, Bard does offer some interesting insight into the frustrations of the French mindset. I was ready to throw this book back into the pile of books lent to me by a friend after reading the first 100 or so pages in one sitting, but I am glad that I stuck with it because I do feel like I learned something new and interesting about a foreign country. Also, there is a recipe for chocolate molten cake that looks supremely doable even for an American college student on a small budget and short attention span (when it comes to cooking, anyways). It gets bumped up to two stars for these reasons.

The main reason that I refuse to bump my rating up to 3 stars or higher is essentially that I find the author's voice to be almost unforgivably obnoxious. Her writing is rough, to say the least. Constant unnecessary deviations in which she pauses to compliment herself on having an ironclad stomach, or congratulate herself on not being "older and uglier" while shopping at the French market, or to project her own body insecurities onto petite French women by sneering at their lack of T&A. Like, lady, you realize that plenty of American women (presumably your target audience) are also naturally slim? There were also some offensive vaguely hom*ophobic comments. This woman may have given me a recipe for chocolate molten cake and some insight into French life, and her career moratorium was certainly relatable, but she honestly seems like an insufferable person. Seems to find herself much more clever and interesting than she really is. Also, your 34DD's aren't a necessary character in this book, stop mentioning them.

I love books about food. I love reading cookbooks. I love going to the grocery store (wierdo). I can admit it....I'm a foodie. So when my GR friend Dana suggested this one for a Buddy Read, I did not hesitate one bit. And I can gladly say, this one fed my addiction.

Elizabeth Bard is in Europe, you could say lost and trying to figure out things. During a weekend jaunt she meets and has an 'affair' with a french man. So her future continues as trips via the Eurostar to Paris where she and her new man move around the city and she learns about love and french food. Oh, and the culture. She tells her story of how they met, fell in love, moved in together in Paris in his tiny apartment, and ultimately, how they got married and bought a flat in Paris. She's in a bit of culture shock too just being in Paris but eventually moving there. Through out the entire story, food plays a major role. She is great at describing mouth watering meals that she made or ate, her trips to the market for fresh veg (OMG I was soooo jealous, being a *frequent* visitor to all of my local farmers markets), to huge, elaborate meals or dinners parties she attended. But I think what I liked most, is that each chapter ended in a number of recipes. So many I flagged as I want to make. Even if I don't, I know this one inspired me to experiment.

I'm so glad Dana suggested this one as it was sitting on my TBR pile for so long where I'm sure it would have remained. The chapters were short and it was a quick read. Well, getting to the end of a chapter to see the recipes was also motivation to read faster. But I did have to knock it a bit, early on in the book I found the author a bit of a spoiled brat with a slight of arrogance about her. She seemed to whine a bit too much. She seemed to chill out in the end. I'm sure it's over whelming moving to a foreign city and each person can handle it differently. Anyway, a must for any foodie. And I'm happy to say the author wrote a follow-up to this one and I've grabbed it already. I'm sure it's not going to be on my TBR very long.

I was trying not to stare, but his hazel-green eyes seemed to be exactly the same color as my own.

It would be easy to begrudge Elizabeth Bard her lovely life. As New Yorker living in London in the early 2000's, she met a nice French man at a conference in Paris. They had lunch and fell in love. Ten years on, she is married to that French man and they split their time between a Parisian pied-a-terre and a home in the south of France. In between, Bard became fluent in the French language and French cookery, penned a best-selling memoir/cookbook, her husband launched a successful digital film company, and they have a beautiful young son. Her blog is rainbow of food p*rn, lit by Provençal sunshine and Parisian lights. Scroll past vivid photos of heirloom tomatoes, fresh figs, haricots verts, cheeses weeping from their casem*nts and naked beasts ready for roasting and you will be seduced by a life that seems the stuff of dreams. Envy as green as those fresh beans would be perfectly understandable.

But instead you just want to curl up on a sofa with Elizabeth to share a pot of tea, nibble her chocolate chip cookies, and giggle like schoolgirls over the photos of Daniel Craig in Le Figaro: Madame. She writes with unselfconscious charm and honesty that makes Lunch in Paris pure pleasure. It is like reading a series of letters from a dear friend.

This is not always a light-hearted memoir, though Bard's breezy style often belies the very serious nature of her acculturation to France, the challenge of a cross-cultural marriage, and the loneliness of living in a city without friends or gainful employment. I have a sense that she made a deliberate decision to put the most positive "atta girl" spin on her period of solitude as she learned her way around the French language and culture and said goodbye to the career of her dreams for the man of her heart. She allows sparks of frustration and anger to glow brightly when she writes of the diagnoses and treatment of her father-in-law's cancer and of her determination to see her husband succeed in his business venture.

There are a few jangly notes, mostly around the issue of money. Although Bard takes pains to show that the advantages she enjoyed in childhood were the result of a resourceful mother, she has the means to attend graduate school in London, then to travel every weekend from London to Paris in the year before she moves to Paris for good. Her mother and stepfather visit frequently from New York and she to see them. At one point, she withdraws around $20k from an ATM (Her stash? Her parents?) to make a down payment on an apartment in the 10eme arrondissem*nt. It's a bit of perspective that sets her apart from your average late 20s/early 30s-something single gal.

Bard centers her memoir around the theme of food and cooking as a means of discovering and falling in love with a country- hardly new ground, particularly when the country in question is France. But her bright writing keeps this well free of cliche territory. Bard does a lovely job of addressing her attitudes toward eating and body image, in a land where women maintain slim physiques on petite frames well into middle age. She uses gentle but candid humor and relates some painful stories of fitting her curves into French expectations. I have since read an essay Bard wrote for Harper's magazine about her struggles with her weight and emotional eating, a struggle that seemed to dissipate in a culture that regards food and mealtimes with reverence.

The recipes at the end of each chapter will make this book a permanent part of my cookbook library. She offers up an array of French home cooking, culled from her imagination, from meals at favorite restaurants and from French friends and in-laws who readily shared their culinary traditions.

I am now addicted to Elizabeth Bard's blog. Seeing her happy life unfold in living color makes my dreams seem full of possibility.

Lunch in Paris is charming memoir of an American journalist who fell in love with a Frenchman, as well as Paris. Bard takes us along the journey as she finds her way in a new country and a new life as American living in Paris. She shares her difficulties of learning the language, frustrations with the system, health care and day to day life, but mostly, she shares food!

It is no secret, I love to read about cooking more than I actually like cooking! When my GR friend PorshaJo and I were trying to decide which foodie book we would read next, Lunch in Paris almost jumped off my shelf - literally. I had seen it a few days earlier, while dusting my shelves, and couldn't remember where I got it, or even if I had read it - turns out, I hadn't. This book fit the foodie bill we were both so craving, filled to brim with delicious food and beautifully prepared meals peppered throughout - each chapter ending with recipes.

My family has always said my husband and I shop like the French when it comes to eating. One of us usually go the grocery store or farmer's market daily - or our own backyard Spring-Fall (I do love gardening.) We rarely plan more than a few days in advance unless we are expecting guests, and mostly eat with the seasons. I loved reading about Bard's daily trips to the market for fresh vegetables and food and how it was an important part of her everyday life, too! Even her American friends were asking her how much longer she planned to spend her days at the market.

The culture seems to revolve around food and the people they share it with. "Most of what was important to the French was around this table: close family, old friend, and fabulous food." I think I could live with that!

If you love to read about food and culture - you will enjoy this one! PorshaJo and I both initially found the author to be a little bit of a pretentious brat, then we remember she was young! - insulting her friends and mother about things they bought her for wedding gifts and little remarks she made along the way, so I took off a star for that. I think she grows up a lot in the end. In fact, we both already have a copy of Bard's next book and are looking forward to following her to Provence!

I greatly enjoyed this lovely, heartfelt memoir of a young woman who went to France for her studies and ended up falling in love and staying. She fell in love with her man and with Paris. Ms. Bard chronicles her struggles with daily life in her second language, career aspirations, and falling in love. Each subject impacts the other, and the author writes in an intimate voice which draws the reader into her cozy Paris apartment. Using personal stories to describe her life lessons (and how she learned them), Ms. Bard managed to feel like a friend of mine calling me up to relate her experiences. Each story is contained in a chapter which ends with the recipes she enjoyed in that chapter. This book is really readable and a pleasure to indulge in.

She begins by saying that that she changed the names of the people in the book except for that of her spouse who is cursed with the name Gwendal. Christ, if ever anyone ever needed a name change who wasn’t in The Hobbit it’s a guy called Gwendal.

I may be the only male to have reviewed this book, and in my defense I wasn’t able to read all of it, but are men and women so different in our tastes that a book that many women seem to have enjoyed can be utterly unreadable for men (and by men I mean me)? What I did read was like a not particularly interesting acquaintance telling you about their trip to France while you contemplate feigning an epileptic seizure to make her stop.

After the first line “I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date (I heard this in the voice of Austin Powers),” I thought maybe they both passed out from boredom and slept face-down in their coq au vin.

I put it down after a few pages. I was immediately repelled by her solipsistic world view. Englishmen have a unique way of making a woman feel invisible. They either look right through you, or lunge at you in a drunken stupor. Imagine a man writing a similar two lines dismissing the women of an entire country.

I’ll get back to this book at another time but it just seems like another addition of Lifestyle p*rn in which someone tells us how wonderful their life is and why can’t we be more like them.

I had some time this afternoon and I thought that I could grind this book out but there is just no way for me to keep the eyes on the road for the 310 pages of this self-indulgent load. There is a love affair in this book but it’s between the author and herself. There isn’t a single thing that happens that isn’t about her and its effect on her glamorous existence in Paris. We get it, you live in Paris and Paris is pretty cool. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make you cool by default because about 5 million people live there and a lot of them are probably boring. There’s no crime in being boring but I don’t want to read your book.

I needed a bit of escapism this month, from San Francisco and my boyfriend’s attempts to go paleo, and this provided both. Romance, France and step by step guides to cooking up a little piece of Parisian paradise at home.

— Rachel Weber

from The Best Books We Read In August 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/08/31/riot-r...

I really enjoyed this book. It seems like it's going to just be about a woman meeting a man in France, but then it turns into so much more. Elizabeth has such an appreciation for food and for culture--both French and American. She meets and marries Gwendal pretty early on and from there it becomes about her search for herself in a new land and the challenge of letting go of expectations for what makes her truly happy. I wish I had the cooking skills to try some of her recipes...maybe one day, but just reading through them was enough to make my mouth water. I had a stomach bug for two days while I was reading this book, and I literally could not read it for those two days, the flavors jump off the page that much. I really need to go on an eat-my-way-through-France trip some time soon. When I read books by expats I sometimes get bogged down by the "Europe is so much better than America" stuff, because while that's certainly true in many respects, it kind of leaves those of us without a European relocation on the horizon up a creek. But Elizabeth is very honest about life there versus life here and the hardships of bridging the gaps, especially in terms of her marriage to a man from a completely different culture, and thus mindset. It all rang so true on many different levels. Some will compare to Eat, Pray, Love (a book I did enjoy), but I found this Elizabeth to be overall a more settled person, who worked out her existential troubles the way most of us do--within our own countries, cities, and homes. Highly recommended--at once enjoyable and profound.

I'm debating whether or not to give this 1 or 2 stars.

This is yet another late 20s/early 30s memoir written by a well-educated, attractive, intelligent yet incredibly self-absorbed, privileged woman. If you're into memoirs like Eat Pray Love and Trail of Crumbs then you'll enjoy this book. If you're like me and can't figure out why you keep on reading these types of books because the authors drive you crazy with their self-absorption, their spoiled "woe is me" attitude, and their pretentiousness, then, well, you won't be crazy about the book.

Bard begins her memoir by telling us she slept with her husband on their first date, but then proceeds to explain to use how she's not "one of those girls." First off, her initial hook is lame. She wants to grab out attention by telling us when she slept with her husband? Thanks, but no thanks. Second, what exactly does she mean by "one of those girls?" First she tells us what she did then she tries to back peddle by insulting some of her fellow females to make herself look better.

The book improves a bit from there when she describes adjusting to life in Paris. As someone who has lived abroad for a somewhat extended period of time, I could relate to her frustrations and wonders at attempting to live in a new/different culture. Sadly, the book takes a turn way downhill towards the end when she goes into her "woe is me, I can't find a job, don't know what I want to do with my life, I'm so educated and had so much promise and look at me now" funk (not a direct quote haha). I could have done without the last 3rd of the book. The only reason I finished the book was so I could write a fair review here in Goodreads.

So there you have it. It's an easy read, so if you're really interested in the expat life in France and if you are a fan of books like Eat Pray Love, then you will most likely enjoy this book. If you're looking for better books about the expat life in France, may I recommend My Life in France by Julia Child and The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz.

I don't want to completely slam the author because she is very good at creating visual images for the reader of great food in a beautiful city. It's been a decade - at least - since my trip to Paris but this book does a great job of bringing back memories. I also liked her portrayal of her husband.

I find it a bit trite that she took a formulamatic approach of comparing our two cultures. It seems like every American expat living in France that wants to write a book or memoir presents us as the dumb ugly uncultured greedy Americans vs. the refined anti-American French people. It sounded like she was a rich spoiled American and in the future she should sit down, be forced to read The Glass Castle, and shut the @#%% up. At the very least she could use the word "I" instead of "we" when discussing how materialistic and shallow her background is.

Because she brought it up so many times, I had a hard time getting past it all. She clearly has a gift for words and writing, so it would be nice to see her write something humbly. The food sounded great; I'm a Type 1 diabetic so I didn't try the recipes.

This is a delightful memoir of an American woman who falls in love with a Frenchman and moves to Paris. They eventually get married, and Elizabeth learns to navigate life in France. She includes a variety of recipes after every chapter, many of which sounded delicious.

Something I found especially interesting was seeing differences in French culture compared to America. For example, the French guidelines for going shopping, for dining, for going to the beach, even for going to the doctor, are different than America's social norms. I also liked that Elizabeth didn't gloss over the difficult aspects of living in a different country -- so many travelogues only give the glamorous details, but I appreciated seeing the ways in which she had to struggle to be accepted or to make new friends. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves French cooking or who dreams of visiting Paris.

I found it poorly written and self-congratulatory and was annoyed with this book the entire time. As an American woman who also married a French man in her late 20's and moved to France, I was hoping to relate, but I just thought her generalizations and egotism were too much. To be honest, because she's very privileged through her good education and opportunity to live in Paris, she could have made the story much more appealing to the readers by transforming the bragging into some humorous self-deprecation. Instead, sadly she comes across as an elitist who takes herself too seriously.

3.5***

Subtitle: A Love Story, With Recipes
When Bard was a graduate student in England (art history), she took a weekend trip to Paris, where she met and had lunch with a Frenchman. And the rest, as they say, is history.

This is a charming memoir where Bard explores the many differences between French and American culture. I did get a little tired of her whining about not knowing where she was going (career wise), but I loved her descriptions of the many meals she enjoyed – from simple brioche and coffee for breakfast to elaborate lamb dishes and the mouth-watering chocolate soufflé. As I read the recipes I found myself inspired, and thinking “I could make this.” (But I know I won’t.)

On the whole, an enjoyable, fast read.

I had a really tough time getting through this one, mainly because the author annoyed me so much. This book has great recipes and excellent descriptions of Paris, but it's more a story of falling in love with a city than a couple falling in love. In fact, I didn't really see any evidence of a great love affair...I can't imagine being madly in love yet taking a year to decide on a marriage proposal. What annoyed me most about this author was how she tried so hard to protest that she came from a priveledged background, even though she admits to attending boarding school, traveling to Egypt at 12, attending grad school in London, etc among many other things. She really believes (or pretends to) that say, a poor kid from the Appalachians has the same exact chances in life as she does. An elitist who doesn't live in reality trying to learn to live in another culture was really how this book came across. Yet her connections seemed to do her husband's career pretty well....looks like he found a goldmine. ;) The non de plume also clinched my impression of an elitist. Does she fancy herself a great bard like Shakespere? In any event, if you like food and Paris, you can get through this, but otherwise you'll most likely give up halfway. The only thing worse than reading about someone else's charmed existence is when they don't even appreciate it for what it is.

Oh my god, LOVE! This book chronicles the ultimate love story and pairs it with food, but not just any food, PARISIAN food! Elizabeth Bard couldn’t have written this book better, because as her story of love and happiness unravels, the recipes become increasingly delicious. Truthfully, the tea she describes in the first chapter is AMAZING and any tips that she has advised on in the book, I have used with success. The evolution of her journey from an American Jew disenfranchised in London into a French-American wife residing in Paris is truly phenomenal. She leaves little to the imagination and is surprisingly honest about her own shortcomings, particularly in regards to her family. Her brutal honesty makes her relatable and her creativity and passion with regards to life make her memorable. Her Jewish background adds to the romance of both cooking and her transition into French life and into her own as a wife, French woman and a Jew. A must read if you are a fan of Julie and Julia or Eat Pray Love. On the cooking notes, her recipes are easy to follow and surprisingly simple. Paying homage to each aspect of her new and old life, she rebuilds her each recipe and tailors it so that a novice in the kitchen would be able to make the food she so deliciously describes.

#13 - 2010.

Took a flyer on this when I was given a Barnes and Noble gift card and they didn't have a single one of the six current books I was seeking. It carries the reader into the heart of living in Paris with young American Elizabeth Bard who is having an extended affair with a young Parisian who sounds like a truly wonderful fellow. Her attacks of angst over not having a career or achieving enough or that her Parisian dreamboat is too happy can become rather annoying especially considering she is living what most people would call the epitome of a dream. However. She is young. And the entire book is not like that, thank heavens. In the end I found most enjoyable, despite the occasional bouts of angst. Quite a fun, light read, especially the parts about her mother adjusting to the Parisians.

I didn't buy this book to read Elizabeth Bard's story; I bought it because it was on a table that were buy two get one free, but mostly because it came with recipes. I love food, and you need to really love food to get through this book. And I mean a real passion for food. The kind of passion you need to have to be able to watch Chopped for hours on end...or is that just me? To put it more in perspective, if you read Eat, Pray, Love and really loved the "eat" part, you will like this book.

Bard's story is interesting. She had a plan for her life, but that plan definitely did not involve moving to Paris and falling in love. In fact, I don't think it involved falling in love with food either. But as any chef will tell you, food, like a book, can take you anywhere in the world. That is what I loved about this book. I didn't care much for the love story or the background stories she gives, but I loved the descriptions of food and the recipes.

If I hadn't been reading this book for a challenge, I don't think I would have finished Bard's story. I think I would have stopped after the first five chapters and just scrolled through recipes. There are so many good ones in this book, and I think I am even going to make some for the holidays coming up!

I have known of and chatted with Elizabeth for nine years - we share a mutual friend and mutual respect and affection for each other - as she jaunted back first from London and then Paris to visit family and friends in the States. This book explores her decision to move to Paris: it is a delicious read of her adjustment to her new life and what role food has played in significant events, from first date to wedding to dealing with her father-in-law's terminal illness. It is told in a very Elizabeth way, which means I feel I am sitting on the couch next to her, having an actual conversation. And I feel it is always the sign of a good book when one feels compelled to try out a recipe immediately - and I have dogeared others!

This blog-to-book is a occasionally pleasant chick-lit memoir of the challenges and rewards of intercultural romance, new marriage, finding a passion, mastering cooking, and adjusting to an expat life. The book suffers from a lack of suspense, a reliance on cultural clichés, and structural gimmickry (each chapter trendily ends with a recipe tie-in). From the first paragraph, the reader realizes that the author
does indeed marry the Frenchman and that the resolution of her existential crisis is that she becomes a published writer.

I absolutely LOVED this book....I enjoyed her story about how she ended up in Paris. Paris is a love affair on it's own... she describes areas of Paris that most tourists don't get to.. which I LOVED. I read this book 2 months before making my first trip out to Paris and was able to pop into some of her hang outs and walk the neighborhoods she described. It was a nice, cozy read! Highly recommend!

Well, it wasn't so terrible I couldn't finish it (hence the 2 stars instead of one), but it was lacking any kind of sensuality (unusual for a book about food and love), and the author/heroine was pretty insufferable. I didn't like her at all and didn't root for her, and in a memoir like this rooting for the heroine is pretty essential to a reader's enjoyment.

This book was so much more than I was expecting! The writing was surprisingly quirky and witty; the recipes well thought out and incorporated into the story. Will read again!

I read this book in three sittings over thecourse of two days. If it wasn't for bookclub, I would have put it down before making it through the first chapter. About half-way through, I thought it was going to be a three star book. Good, but a little too off color and more women's magazine material than the stuff I pass on to my friends. As I pushed my way through, I realized that I had to give it at least four stars. The way the book was still buzzing through my mind when I woke up this morning left me with one solitary thought, namely, that this book deserves five stars. It's a book I'm going to pass around. It's sure to be one of the titles I rave about all year long and include in my top ten round up when we get to December. From the first sentence, you'll understand what I mean about this book being off color. It's not graphic. It doesn't show up on every single page or set the tone of the story. The thing is, this book is a brutally honest account of real life. Bard wrote it out and seems to have held nothing back. She quotes people honestly. She shares her worries, her fears, her hopes, her sucesses, her memories, and her truest feelings about herself and the people around her.

This story is the story of one woman struggling with the question we all find ourselves devestated by. She makes big decisions. She is brave. She is scared. She contemplates giving up, giving in, and running back to the life she KNOWS how to live. Somehow, love and support and Paris itself convince her to stick it out. She hangs on even when she isn't sure how much longer she possibly can. She learned the lessons we all have to learn and she wrote about them after she made it through. As you're reading, you have no idea how it turns out or if it even works out. You read not knowing if she ran back to America or became her best version of a Parisian. You don't know how the struggles she faced affected her or her relationships with the people she is crazy about.

The book unfolds and with it, the questions running through your mind are answered. As she learned what would be, she wove the story in a way that allows you a similar experience. She didn't have the answers and she doesn't just give them. She had to squirm her way through it and she makes sure you do too.

Honesty is literature always makes for a first rate book. Bard put everything into the pages of this memoir and while I'm not sure I would have been so brave, I admire her for it. She may be Jewishish. She may have spent the better part of her adult life living in countries she was not familiar with. Her language and relationahips and decisions may have been far different from my own, but this woman's story reminded me of the whole purpose of being alive. That one way or another everything always works out. That what you've got to do is stick with it. Keep living, and loving, and cooking, and writing. Eventually it all adds up and you realize that you've made it.

This is one woman's story of doing just that. Of making it even when she was she that she never would unless she turned back. If you're wondering how she made it or if she turned back or just exactly how things turned out, then you'll just have to pick this one up for yourself.

Lunch in Paris was a delightful, easy read from front to back. It was one of those books I felt I was meant to read because it paralleled my life at the time. I absolutely loved the idea of each chapter ending with a few recipes, especially when those recipes were featured in the previous chapter. In some cases those recipes motivated me to finish the book as quick as possible.

This is the type of book you'll love depending on how much you can relate to Bard's situation, or if you are intrigued by anything French. Hearing her descriptions of the city of Paris, the markets, the country, etc..made me feel like I was back in Paris, walking down those narrow cobblestone streets. Bard also observes the French philosophy on food and comments on how it influenced her healthy appreciation and respect the art of cooking and eating. The plot was a bit dull at times, but for the most part it was an endearing story of the dance between two cultures within a marriage, and Bard's personal quest to create her own life again in a foreign country.

As for the quality of the recipe's, I've made a few that turned out really simple, fresh, and most importantly, made you want to savor each bite.

3.75 (liked it)

With the caveat that I generally enjoy books about food and France, and that I found many of the author's thoughts/feelings and experiences in France similar to mine, I really enjoyed this light read. What I liked most about this memoir was the author's amusing and candid observations about herself and her life in France, including her relationship with her boyfriend, the food, and the culture. I also identified with her ongoing struggle to reconcile her idealistic visions with the realities of living in a new country. As someone who's also interested in history, I also enjoyed her lighthearted, sidenote comparisons between her (modern) life and the past (e.g. literary figures, etc.) The book includes many simple, good-looking, comfort-food recipes which are related to the story, and are ones that I look forward to making myself. For me, much of the writing in this book felt so familiar that it seemed similar to a book that I would have written, or to a book that one of my friends would have written. I would recommend it as a fun chick-lit read, especially to foodies and those who like France.

With a first line of "I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date.", you can see why readers are sucked into this delicious story of an American finding her way in Paris. But, it was not until the description of shopping for vegetables in the market that had me drooling and wishing I could live Elizabeth Bard's life.
This well-written account of marrying a French man and setting into a Parisian life is stomach-grumbling good. I read it in one long, enjoyable sitting, like a good French meal.

You will love this book and walk away hungry for more.

Victoria Allman
author of: SEAsoned: A Chef's Journey with Her Captain
SEAsoned - A Chef's Journey with Her Captain

I picked this up for 2 reasons: the first was that I have recently gotten into the (admittedly fairly recent) trend of memoir/recipe books and wanted another one. The second reason being, of course, that it was about Paris, where my heart lies.
Normally this book would have warranted a 5-star rating, so I want to explain why it's a 4 for me. It has wonderful recipes, great writing with a clever, loveable and unique voice, and tells a captivating story while bridging 2 continents and 2 cultures, never skipping her struggles or joys. My first memoir/recipe book read was Molly of Orangette's book. It just flowed so effortlessly the entire time and the recipes matched the stories. I would finish a chapter and go, "I hope X recipe is at the end of this" and it always was, sometimes with a bonus one!
In Lunch in Paris, the story flowed well, but the recipes were not as coherent with the stories. They didn't always fit and kind of felt stuffed in there.
Still, I would recommend this 100%, especially if you love food, France, or both.