Eating Eternity

Book excerpt: "Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour," wrote Talleyrand. That Napoleon's most gifted advisor should speak so highly of eating says much about the importance of food in French culture. From the crumbs of a madeleine dipped in tisane that inspired Marcel Proust to the vast produce market where Emile Zola set one of his finest novels, the French have celebrated the relationship between art and food. Eating Eternity offers a seductive menu of those places in the French capital where art and food have intersected. Appendices guide you to the restaurant where Napoleon proposed to Josephine, the cafEs patronized by Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Isadora Duncan and Man Ray, as well as those out-of-the-way sites that bring to life the culinary experience of Paris. Eating Eternity is an invaluable and unique guide to the art and food of Paris. Bon appetit!