Like many other people, when I first picked up The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris by Patricia Wells, I knew I was holding a significant book in my hands, a book positively like no other, one I just knew was going to change my life, the way Paris itself had. Indeed it did, and to this day I count the guide among my favorite books in the world. The Food Lover’s Guide “cracked the code,” as Patricia notes in We’ve Always Had Paris … and Provence: “We made it possible for every American who came to the city to feel comfortable, knowledgeable in ordering that steak rare, daring to sample that warm foie gras, willing to take the Métro out to the twentieth arrondissement to sample Bernard Ganachaud’s crusty sourdough bread, or confident that they knew what to swoon over when they could get a table at Jamin, the new hit restaurant.” And here’s the remarkable thing: even though the guide’s last edition was published in 1999 (Workman), it is still indispensable. Many of the places to eat, purveyors, and shops are still in business today; Patricia’s notes and tips are still accurate; the recipes she provides are still winners (whenever I bake madeleines and financiers I turn to this book); and the French-English culinary glossary at the back of the book is the most extensive you’ll find in any similar book (I made a copy of it years ago and still bring it with me to France).
Of course, since she compiled this book, Wells went on to write The Food Lover’s Guide to France (Workman, 1987), which I also still use, and eight cookbooks, including Bistro Cooking (Workman, 1989), Simply French: Patricia Wells Presents the Cuisine of Joël Robuchon (William Morrow, 1991), and The Paris Cookbook (HarperCollins, 2001). She also served as restaurant critic for the French newsweekly L’Express, the only woman and only foreigner ever to have held the post. Additionally, Wells teaches cooking classes both in Paris and at her eighteenth-century home in Provence, Chanteduc. More recently, in 2008, she and her husband, Walter, wrote We’ve Always Had Paris … and Provence: A Scrapbook of Our Life in France (Harper), which I read in two days because I just couldn’t stop reading about their thirty years together in France. It was Walter’s career move from the New York Times to the International Herald Tribune that brought the couple to Paris. He recalls in the book that, with hindsight, the decision to go to Paris was right, but he asks: “Why Paris? What was it about the city that pulled us there and kept us? Well, how high is the sky? It’s not that the answer is elusive, or the answers, because there are millions of them in words and images and none of them are more adequate than grunts and blurs. The ones that are adequate are personal and intense and they have grown and changed over thirty years. I don’t remember now how many of my own answers were obvious in 1980. But both as a new arrival and as a longtime resident, a hundred times a day if not a thousand I found something that brought passing delight.”
I missed meeting Patricia and Walter when I was last in Paris, and I look forward to the day when I will (hopefully) meet them. But in the meantime, I caught up with Patricia via e-mail in between cooking classes:
Q: Had you visited Paris before you moved to the city in the first week of January 1980?
A: I first visited in January of 1972 and it was love at first sight!
Q: Some years after you moved to Paris you also bought a house in Provence. How much time do you spend now in Paris?
A: We basically spend from May to October in Provence and in Paris, with frequent trips back to Provence and the United States, in the fall and winter months.
Q: The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris was updated four times. Did you anticipate how successful it would be?
A: I always feel that if I am crazy in love with something and write about it, there will be enough people that feel the way I do. It turned out that way, and it was a wonderful way to launch a book career.
Q: There really is no other book like the Food Lover’s Guide, before or since. Why did you decide not to continue updating it?
A: As the world became more and more digital and Paris began to change more and more quickly it seemed that, by the time I updated it, it would be out of date. Keep in mind that the book was written before home computers, sticky notes, faxes, e-mail, Federal Express, etc.—we wrote our notes on carbon paper and had to mail in the copy! I also felt that all the time I spent updating the guide would take me away from other writing and researching.
Q: Can you name a handful of places that appeared in the first edition that you still frequent today?
A: So many places. Of course, the grand restaurants that were small ones when the first guide came out, such as Guy Savoy (18 rue Troyon, 17ème) and Robuchon (La Table de Joël Robuchon, 16 avenue Bugeaud, 16ème; L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, 5 rue de Montalembert, 7ème). The great majority of the restaurants in the first guide either don’t exist anymore or have changed hands many times over. We may go back to many of the originals—such as Chez les Anges (54 rue de la Tour Maubourg, 7ème) and Le Chiberta (3 rue Aresène-Houssaye, 8ème), which kept the name but is a totally different restaurant now. For cafés of course we still go to Café de Flore (172 boulevard Saint-Germain, 6ème) and Le Dôme Café (108 boulevard du Montparnasse, 14ème); for wine bars, Willi’s (13 rue des Petits-Champs, 1er) and Au Sauvignon (80 rue des Saints-Pères, 7ème); and all of the markets, which of course have changed the least over the years in terms of stability. We still get coffee at La Brûlerie des Ternes (10 rue Poncelet, 17ème), chocolate at La Maison du Chocolat (original location at 52 rue François 1er, 8ème, and other locations), bread at Poilâne (8 rue du Cherche-Midi, 6ème).
Q: In an essay you wrote for Bon Appétit (May 2001), you noted that the number of female chefs in Paris seemed to have declined by that time. You also noted that Parisians were still rather reluctant about global cuisine, that “the French flirtation with foreign influences is so light as to be nonexistent.” Are there more female chefs in Paris today, and have Parisians more fully embraced outside culinary influences?
A: I don’t know the exact number of female chefs in Paris today but they still are very small in number. It is still a very physical job and one that is difficult for anyone who wants to raise a family. Parisians today certainly embrace all manner of cuisines but stay faithful to their own since there is so much variety.
Q: How many classes do you offer in Paris in a calendar year, and how quickly do they fill up? How far in advance do you recommend interested participants confirm?
A: We announce our classes in November two years in advance, so that in November 2010, for example, we announce the class schedule for 2012. Almost all classes fill up completely, but it is hard to say how far in advance people should reserve. The best is to watch the Web site (patriciawells.com), which always gives an idea of spaces available.
Q: I see that you’ve recently offered Tastes of Vietnam classes. What inspired you to teach there?
A: A student who has ties to Vietnam asked if we wanted to do it and it seemed like a perfect challenge. And it was. We have also taught classes in Florence, Venice, and Verona.
Q: What is your favorite time of year in Paris?
A: I always offer classes in Paris in the spring. I love the first-of-season asparagus, peas, baby artichokes, spring lamb, strawberries, and even great tomatoes from Sicily.
Q: Which arrondissement do you live in, and what are some of your most frequent stops in your neighborhood?
A: We live in the seventh and I have my office in the sixth. Favorite haunts are of course Bon Marché (24 rue de Sèvres, 7ème) for both the department store and food hall; Fish La Boissonnerie (69 rue de Seine, 6ème) for dinner; Fromagerie Quatrehomme (62 rue de Sèvres, 7ème) for cheese; the boulevard Raspail street market on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday; La Dernière Goutte (6 rue Bourbon le Château, 6ème) for wine; Huilerie Leblanc (6 rue Jacob, 6ème) for oil; and Poilâne for bread.
Q: How long were you working at the International Herald Tribune?
A: I worked there from 1980 on, and still do some occasional writing, but gave up my restaurant critic job in 2007.
Q: You’ve obviously experienced a lot of changes in Paris over the last thirty years. Have some things remained the same? And in what ways do you feel Paris changed you?
A: As I said earlier, the markets are the one constant, though the increased availability of produce is one big change. When we moved to Paris, people dressed up, men in sport coats on weekends, women in dresses. Now it seems everyone dresses the same all over the world. Stores are open longer hours. Many small places have gone out of business, but I am pleased to see that there are still so many independent shopkeepers with great boutiques.
Q: I suspect that your wine Clos Chanteduc—a Côtes-du-Rhône that received a score of 89 from Robert Parker—is the one that occupies the most space in your wine cellar. Is it available in the States?
A: Eric Solomon of Eric Solomon Selections (europeancellars.com) is now our importer.
Q: Are you working on a new book?
A: Yes! Two books, to be out in 2011: Salad as a Meal and Simply Truffles, both published by William Morrow.
Q: Will you ever move back to the States?
A: Never say never, but we have no plans to return for good.
At any season, and all year long, in the evening the view of the city from the bridges was always exquisitely pictorial. One’s eyes became the eyes of a painter, because the sight itself approximated art, with the narrow, pallid façades of the buildings lining the river; with the tall trees growing down by the water’s edge; with, behind them, the vast chiaroscuro of the palatial Louvre, lightened by the luminous lemon color of the Paris sunset off toward the west; with the great square, pale stone silhouette of Notre-Dame to the east. The stance from which to see Paris was any one of the bridges at the close of the day. The Pont Neuf still looked as we had known it on the canvases of Sisley and Pissarro.
Paris then seemed immutably French. The quasi-American atmosphere which we had tentatively established around Saint-Germain had not yet infringed onto the rest of the city. In the early twenties, when I was new there, Paris was still yesterday.
—Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday: 1925–1939
