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Zusatztext “[The] cream of gastronomic prose.” — Newsday “An ongoing history of our national adventures at the table.” —from the Introduction by Ruth Reichl “A banquet of portraits and reminiscences.”— Publishers Weekly “[ Gourmet ’s] tastiest morsels.” — Entertainment Weekly Informationen zum Autor Ruth Reichl is the New York Times bestselling author of five memoirs, two works of fiction ( The Paris Novel and Delicious! ), and the cookbook My Kitchen Year . She was editor in chief of Gourmet magazine and previously served as restaurant critic for The New York Times , as well as food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times . She has been honored with six James Beard Awards. Klappentext Contributors to endless feasts include: James Beard/Cooking with James Beard: Pasta Ray Bradbury/Dandelion Wine Robert P. Coffin/Night of Lobster Laurie Colwin/A Harried Cook's Guide to Some Fast Food Pat Conroy/The Romance of Umbria Elizabeth David/Edouard de Pomiane M.F.K. Fisher/Three Swiss Inns Ruth Harkness/In a Tibetan Lamasery Madhur Jaffrey/An Indian Reminiscence Anita Loos/Cocktail Parties of the Twenties George Plimpton/I, Bon Vivant, Who, Me? E. Annie Proulx/The Garlic War Claudia Roden/The Arabian Picnic Jane and Michael Stern/Two for the Road: Havana, North Dakota Paul Theroux/All Aboard! Cross the Rockies in Style Three Swiss Inns M.F.K. Fisher I remember three restaurants in Switzerland with a special clearness: one on the lake near Lausanne, another behind it in the high hills toward Berne, and the last on the road to Lucerne, in German speaking country. When we went back, in June of 1939, to pack our furniture and bolt the shutters, we could not believe our friends were right to make us do it. All of Europe stretched and sang under a warm sun; the crops were good; people walked about and ate and drank and smiled dreamily, like drugged cancer sufferers. Everyone was kind to us, not consciously thinking that we might never meet again, but actually knowing that it was so. We drove toward Lucerne one day. Children were selling the first early Alpine roses along the roads—tight ugly posies, the same color as the mottled purple that the little girls’ cheeks had. At Malters, one of the few villages of that part of the country not almost overpoweringly quaint and pretty, we stopped at the Gasthaus zum Kreuz. We wondered if Frau Weber would remember us, and if her neurasthenic daughter Anneli would be yearning still to be a chamber-maid in London, and if—most important—if there would still be trout swimming in the little tank of icy water that stood in the dining room. Frau Weber, looking more than ever like a virile Queen Victoria, did indeed remember us, discreetly, at first, and then with floods of questions and handshakings and general delight. Anneli was there, fat, pale, still yearning, but this time for Croydon, where she hoped to exchange her Cockney accent for a more refined one. And the trout still darted behind glass in the bubbling water. We stayed there for many hours, eating and drinking and remembering incredulously that once we had almost driven past the Kreuz without stopping. That incident was several years ago, when my husband and I were roaming about the country with my parents. The chauffeur was sleepy after a night spent in a hotel filled with unusually pretty kitchen maids, and he lost the way. We went along roads, mazily, that led where we did not want to go at all; and we all got very hungry and perhaps a little too polite. Finally we said to stop at the first gasthaus, no matter what it looked like. We could certainly count on beer and cheese, at the least. Pierre stifled a yawn, and his neck got a little pinker; and in perhaps a minute we had c...
