- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown & Company; First Edition edition (23 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0316857025
- ISBN-13: 978-0316857024
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.4 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 333,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Bon Appetit!
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Peter Mayle, author of the bestselling A Year in Provence has done it again--but differently. Travelling this time beyond his adopted Provence throughout France, the food and travel writer has produced Bon Appetit!, a celebration of many of the country's gastronomic joys. Whether pursuing La Foire de Fromages, the annual cheese fair at Livarot; a Burgundian marathon offering runners Médoc refreshment; or a village truffle mass that concludes with a heady dégustation of the newly blessed tuber, Mayle takes his readers in hand and shows all. Wide-eyed yet knowing, ever affable but with a touch of mischief, he's an ideal companion, the best possible narrator of his lively food adventures.
Mayle's gastronomic baptism occurs when, as a 19-year-old, he dines for the first time in France. "At the first mouthful of French bread and French butter," he writes, "my taste buds, dormant until then, went into spasm." The paroxysm leads to serious food-and-wine perambulations--and, finally, to chapters including "The Thigh-Taster of Vitel" (a frog-eating fete), "Slow Food" (snail love in Martigny les Bains) and "The Guided Stomach" (an investigation of the Michelin Guide restaurant inspection) among others. Readers are also present for a debate on the secret of the perfect omelette, a search for the best possible chicken in Bourg-en-Bresse and a visit to a St Tropez restaurant notable for its scantily clad habitués. Those familiar with Mayle's work, and those yet to discover it, are in for a treat. --Arthur Boehm
Review
Mayle continues to milk (maybe not quite le mot juste considering the litres of wine consumed in the name of research) his Francophile love affair in this gastronomic tour de France. Using the numerous food and wine fairs and f tes which take place throughout the year across France as his pegs, Mayle attends a church service to give thanks for the "breathtakingly expensive" black truffle, savours frogs legs to become a member of the Confrerie des Tastes Cuisses de Grenouilles de Vittel, is inducted in the mysteries of preparing and eating snails at a Foire aux Escargots where he consumes several dozen despite learning that a snail's natural diet consists of a toxic salad of deadly nightshade, poisonous mushroom and hemlock, and celebrates the elite Bresse chickens at Les Glorieuses in Bourg-en-Bresse. And even when he is reluctantly persuaded to check into a health spa, he is fed a diet of "duck, lamb, guinea fowl, pate, cheese, butter, eggs, a little foie gras, potato soup and huge croissants for breakfast". All healthily cooked, of course, the Cuisine Minceur method. As with his Provence books, encounters and conversations with the locals provide fertile copy, and there is much here for the foodie, wine buff and Francophile. But perhaps it doesn't have quite the same broad-ranging appeal of A Year in Provence to emulate that book's million-selling status.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Feast Of Foody Anecdotes,
This review is from: Bon Appetit!: Travels Through France with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew (Paperback)
After a brief detour into the realm of fiction Peter Mayle here returns to what he does best: selling the French and their many humorous mannerisms to us Francophobic Brits! Bon Appetit acts as a tour guide to the regional culinary peculiarities that is France; from the annual truffle Mass at Richerenches near Orange to the ultimate in detoxes at Michel Guerard's spa at Eugenie-les-Bains this is a book which should not be read with an empty stomach. Mayle's histrionic prose is liberally seasoned with descriptions of frog's leg and Bresse chicken, truffle omelette and Burgundian bender - this being a festival known as "les Trois Glorieuses" and a cutely French excuse for grown men to dress up in robes and hats and drink copiously for three days. In England we would call it a lads' weekend in Blackpool!Bon Appetit does not pretend to be an exhaustive guide to all things French and food-oriented but it does present us with a candid snapshot of a nation enjoying its culinary riches; in every chapter there seem to be colourful locals who are prepared to humour this naive Englishman and explain in painstaking detail why it is not recommended to eat wild snails or how to be a champion cheese eater. Mayle, like Paul Theroux, seems to attach himself magnetically to these characters and, at times, it becomes a little tiresome, cliched almost when another friendly local clears his throat in an attempt to educate our author. That said, Bon Appetit is a slickly written and informative introduction to the pros and cons of French cuisine. It will make you laugh, it will make you salivate and it will make you look twice at those little shelled molluscs that seem intent on devouring your entire garden every night. Good eating!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A light hearted look at the French passion for food.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Bon Appetit! Travels through France with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew (Hardcover)
Taking a break from Provence Peter Mayle takes us on a gastronomic tour of France and visits places that celebrate such items as frogs legs, snails, cheese and of course, wine. Although I was a bit apprehensive about buying this book as it seemed to be a change of direction for Peter, and I really loved his books on Provence, I can say that it is very entertaining as well as educational. If you are looking for a light read and still need that bit of escapism then this book is recommended. Its a fun read eventhough the particular culinary delights of various towns may not be to everyones taste!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
GASTRO GALLIC HUMOUR,
By agamemnon (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bon Appetit!: Travels Through France with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew (Paperback)
This is the book to read if you want to know about, or perhaps visit, all those food fairs and festivals celebrated by our French neighbours across the Channel. They have whole weekends devoted to the truffle, the humble snail, a special cheese... And as ever with Peter Mayle, the French participants are full of Gallic charm and unconsciously entertaining to us over here. Peter tours around the country visiting many towns and villages, and gives a helpful resume of festivals at the end for anyone keen to retrace his steps. Great fun!
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