The Paris Café Cookbook

Paris cafés are an essential municipal utility that energizes the City of Light, powers its imagination and fuels that great romantic notion: possibility. The most unforgettable Parisian stories turn on a chance encounter at a café. In The Paris Café Cookbook (Morrow), Daniel Young captures the charms and tastes of the 50 best cafés, ranging from great literary classics like the Café de Flore and Le Select to newer haunts like Le Café Marly and Café Charbon. The book features more than 150 authentic café recipes, from soulful standards like coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon, croque monsieur and tarte tatin to expatriate café classics like Welsh rarebit and apple crumble.

Between bites, Daniel tells stories of café routines and rendezvous. One such tale involves a bookish habitué he spotted at a café in the historic Buttes aux Cailles district. Seated by the window and dressed in a frayed woolen pullover and tattered cordoroys, the Parisian put on his eyeglasses solely for the purpose of sampling a cheap glass of red wine. He knew that the first contact with a wine, like that with an alluring stranger, is made with the eye and preferably a clear-sighted one.