Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris [Paperback]

New Yorkerstaff writer A.J. Liebling recalls his Parisian apprenticeship in the fine art of eating in this charming memoir,Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris.

There would come a time when, if I had compared my life to a cake, the sojourns in Paris would have presented the chocolate filling. The intervening layers were plain sponge.

In his nostalgic review of his Rabelaisian initiation into lifes finer pleasures, Liebling celebrates the richness and variety of French food, fondly recalling great meals and memorable wines. He writes with awe and a touch of envy of his friend and mentor Yves Mirande, one of the last great gastronomes of France, who would dispatch a lunch of raw Bayonne ham and fresh figs, a hot sausage in crust, spindles of filleted pike in a rich rosesauce Nantua, a leg of lamb larded with anchovies, artichokes on a pedestal of foie gras, and four or five kinds of cheese, with a good bottle of Bordeaux and one of Champagneall before beginning to contemplate dinner.

In A.J. Liebling, a great writer and a great eater became one, for he offers readers a rare and bountiful feast in this delectable book.

With an introduction by James Salter, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author ofA Sport and a Pastime

A.J. Lieblingjoined the staff of The New Yorker in 1935, where his Wayward Press columns became a model of fine journalistic writing. Other Liebling titles available from North Point Press areBetween Meals, The Honest Rainmaker,andThe Neutral Corner: Uncollected Boxing Essays.