Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes

By: Elizabeth Bard  

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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Lovely read. - I really enjoyed this book. It was funny and full of life. A joy to read, a book to own.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Love this book! - This book was full of adventure, good food, great ideas, and humor. I sat and read it all in one weekend because I didn't want to put it down! From the romance to the discovery of a new world there was so much offered in this book it was an awesome read!

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
A romantic love story served up with French food. - I read Elizabeth's book due to "Forever in France", a Parisian women's group recommendation.

What is romantic about the French?
Is it that they will sleep with you half way through your first date?
Well, on this account, Elizabeth qualifies as being as French as Carla herself.
In general, as a nation, they sleep with anyone half way through anything.
This is their only "freedom", and they feel entitled, not immoral.
After all, their day is summed up in France as "metro, bolo, dodo."

The French are known worldwide to be depressed and afraid of nearly everyone and everything. They only want certainty, and they hate risk of any kind. Is their hierarchical system to blame? It does make living in France feel like one has enlisted into a civilian military, which in fact is true. Why else do they take the most depression pills of any country in the world?

I have yet to meet a working French women who can cook. Perhaps this is why Elizabeth can be creative in the kitchen, as she has no paid work to do in a real job in France. She has the time and the interests, but just how long can she stay out of the workforce and free lance her way into her own pension?
Without a job or marriage to this Frenchman, she could not even qualify to be in France without an accepted income from investment capital.

As for me, I attended Cordon Bleu and have been a judge at the International Fancy Food Show in New York. I know how to cook very well, but this takes time, money and skill. As far as food goes, who can one live a long, healthy life eating cheese, duck livers, meat, cream, butter and pastries? No one, not even the French. As far as food is concerned, the French rarely cook. They are ranked second in the world as faithful patrons of McDonalds and of fast, cheap food. They really don't have the wages for good food, as it is too expensive here and regressively taxed.

The working spouses have food vouchers they can use or cafeterias at work to prepare their lunch. I think most foreign non-working wives like Elizabeth eat a lot of "lunches" alone at home while their spouses have them prepared for them at their work place.

The best thing about France isn't there mediocre but high priced restaurants or rich, death inducing food, or their reputation for romance. The best thing about France is their public transportation, medical care system, fast internet, phone service, privacy, few ads, and some really good museums.


I am an American lawyer living in Paris for the last 3 years with my French boyfriend. He is not typically French and I am not typically American, as we has been expatriated to work in North America, Asia, North Africa, and various countries in Europe. Neither one of us want to stay in France "forever", but then again, we still have lots of choices.

I did enjoy reading Elizabeth's book, but I found myself oddly concerned for her future and especially for American women who will try to naively follow her example. Of course, she is writing about the beginning of her cross-cultural life, and is still at the beginning of this long, long road of 41 years of hard labor. In fact, she has really chosen socialism over capitalism.

Perhaps I know too much about where Elizabeth finds herself in this integration process. But I want to ask her how will the present French rules and culture affect a foreign spouse, especially their entire working, married, and family life?

Why did Elizabeth write this book?
What else could she have done?
It is the question Sherlock would ask. "Why did the dog not bark?"

What kind of job can Elizabeth get when she must compete with those who can really speak French?
She is taking all the risks of integrating into another culture and its destination which route and speed has already been decided for her, as socialism decided everything for you. Can she twist herself into their formula? Her dear husband is taking no risk at all, and his French parents would agree.

The French, after getting an ear full of their personal problems, are "married to France for life".
The women don't need the men, and the men don't need the women.
France has designed it this way in the name of socialsim, but really France need the taxes from labor and more citizens to work so they will continue to pay for all the benefits given.

France is their real spouse, and they take orders only from France. They follow French orders out of fear and without thinking, which is their history, like it or not. They procreate due to French pro-natal policies which pay them 10% more in their pensions if they have 3 or more children. At the same time, they outsource their jobs to Eastern Europe or Morocco to cut labor costs. How long can they continue to pay for babies who will have no decent jobs but need more benefits?

France is the only one who can "potentially" provide the "certainty" of their desired "benefits", not the mortal, foreign spouse. This is not American capitalism, where spouses are their real partners, have devised their own life plan and change it as circumstances determine.

Here the thinking and gears of the French "assembly line plan for your life" must be dealt with at every turn. The thinking and values of oneself or ones spouse does not matter. It is winning the game of "French socialism" that only counts.

French law and rules have already decided your destination and direction, and the route you will take to get there. You are just to live it out with your life. This "assembly line" is a type of calculation of a life span and all the things socialism wants you to do. It alone determines how French men and women live in order to receive state guaranteed benefits and pensions. CONFORMITY is the name of the game here. Average is the result.

There are "points" for going to college and it all must be completed by a timetable, that is before you are 27 years old. Their are "points" for working 41 years, and points for having 3 or more children. If a French marriage with a foreigner doesn't work out, the risk is only on the foreigner. The foreign spouse must complete the "points game" or end up with little to nothing.

The financial risks of socialism must really be accepted if an American women has her work and procreating life ahead of her. Could it be that Elizabeth is already too "old" to make the French point system work out for herself? Hasn't she already missed the predetermined timetable that is imposed on all the French?

This love story would be all together different if Elizabeth does not need to work due to inherited or accumulated wealth. Then a women can look forward to the yearly French income tax bill. In addition, the wealth tax bill will arrive, after 5 years in France, with no benefits at all in site. This will become her charitable contribution to the French.

France is the country international divorce lawyers advise clients to bring their spouses when they plan on dumping them. When a spouse wants to divorce, if they can, they ask for a transfer to France so they can execute their divorce plans. A spouse in France means "isn't it great that little property, if any, will need to be split"! Normally, what is split is the sell of their mortgaged house, and that is it.

Of course, this doesn't matter to the French, as money is a taboo. It will matter to any foreign women who wants to return to her homeland. This is why it is the favorite jurisdiction of those who know the spouse will end up with nothing except some depreciating euros in her future and "French memories".

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Pleasant enough, but nothing memorable - This is the account of an American woman who moves to Paris and marries her French boyfriend (who's not at all a stereotype - he's a tapdancing engineer with the unlikely name of Gwendal). It's about how she adapts to living in Paris and how she falls in love with the city and the cuisine. She ends every chapter with some of her favorite recipes, so it's part memoir, part travelogue, part recipe book.

Unfortunately Elizabeth just isn't as interesting as she thinks she is. There's too much about her - I love history! I grew up surrounded by women! I like eating! - and not enough objectively about the experience of moving to a new country. Parts of the book also felt like they had been taken verbatim from emails to her mother (eg "tonight when I came out of the Louvre I noticed them cleaning the windows").

Some of the most interesting parts for me were the way that she starts to find fault in so many aspects of the American culture. She pokes fun at American tourists and sneers at her mother for assuming that things will operate in Europe as they do in the US. Over my life I've lived in seven different countries, and it got me thinking about the way that I have adapted and assimilated. I was also interested in her views on the differences between American vs French attitudes, how what is quite acceptable in the US is seen as pushy in France and how Americans show their power by helping whereas the French show their power by blocking progress.

The integration of the recipes (more than 60) feels very natural given Elizabeth's obsession with food. (She's the kind of writer who describes walls as being the color of butter or a sweater as being the color of warm milk.) While I haven't tried any, for the most part they sound tasty and easy to follow. They are also included in the index.

While I found the book okay, I got bored towards the end, because ultimately it doesn't go anywhere. It felt like Bard wrote it because she had nothing better to do with her time. There are better books that cover similar territory. Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris is one which I recommend, or if the foodie aspect is what appeals, try The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
light and entertaining, with excellent recipes - For the lovers of everything French, "Lunch in Paris" is a nice pastime. Elizabeth Bard wrote up the story of her romance leading to a happy marriage with a Frenchman, lacing it with many recipes for French food.

Studying for a Master's degree, Elizabeth attended a conference in Paris, where she met Gwendal, a PhD student, and she let herself be seduced by his personality and lifestyle, falling in love with him and with Parisian life at the same time. She wanders around Paris, eating in typical French restaurants, making observations of differences between French and American homes, families, attitude to work... There are some recommendations of restaurants which sound amazing, and the Paris which emerges from her story is even more alluring than the one from guidebooks (and very realistic).

There are many similar books, in the boom that started with Peter Mayle - pleasant literary holidays for those who cannot go to their dream places. "Lunch in Paris" is not very original and fill of clichés, but it is written with humor and wit, and the recipes are excellent and not too hard to follow (I have tried some already: yoghurt cake, savory cake, lentils, ratatouille - and all of them worked). In fact, I think that the recipes may be the best part of the whole book. The narrative part is a bit naïve, banal and stereotypic, but it reads fast and is a pleasant distraction from everyday life.

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