Product Description

Gastronomy is a wonderful starting point to study France and the French. As the retired school master from Provence says, "The religion of France is food. And wine, of course." And they put their money where their mouth is, spending a greater proportion of their income on food and drink than any other nation in the world. Literally hundreds of gastronomic fairs and festivals take place throughout the year all over France - a frog fair, an hommage to the sausage, to the turnip, to the quiche and the noble Camembert. What kind of person is a snail-fancier? Is there a brotherhood of sausage connoisseurs? How can you devote an entire weekend to the French fry? Peter Mayle finds out and brings to life the people who can get passionate about a frog's leg or a well-turned omelette. Over ten years ago he transformed our feelings about Provence, now he wants to capture the irresistible essence of France herself - and her food.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1250103 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 233 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
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.

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
'Mayle has an admirably benevolent outlook on life and is a forceful advocate of living for the moment'

Customer Reviews

Same book, different name
Not really a review, (although it was quite an entertaining read!) but just to let readers know that this book is the same as that published in the US under the name: "French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Ford and Corkscrew". Anyone have an opinion (or information) as to the reason for the change in title for the US market?

Another Year
There is a time and a place for reading Peter Mayle. The best place is in Southern France in the heat of the day, over a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. On rainy afternoons in Liverpool, something is missing.

In this latest book he tours France visiting various festivals related to particular foods and wines. Frogs - with remarkable thighs in Vittel, Chickens in Bourg en Bresse with perfect colouring - Red, White and Blue of course, Wine in Beaune, Scantily clad women in St. Tropez (?). They are all here. They are described with his usual humour and observation. If you love food, wine or France this is for you. If not you may become a convert.

A nice holiday read.