Why a Booktrail?
2000s: What does go on behind the curtains of Rue Grenelle in Paris?
The Gourmet
What you need to know before your trail
Titled Une Gourmandise in French, this is the novel that precedes the more well known The Elegance of the Hedgehog but it is this short introduction, again to Rue Grenelle that particularly tingles and tempts the palate.
France’s greatest food critic is dying, after a lifetime in single-minded pursuit of sensual delights. But as Pierre Arthens lies on his death bed, he is tormented by an inability to recall the most delicious food to ever pass his lips, which he ate long before becoming a critic. Desperate to taste it one more time, he looks back over the years to see if he can pin down the elusive dish.
Travel Guide
Paris – Rue de Grenelle
For this novel is about the food critic Pierre Arthens, who lives in the penthouse apartment of rue Grenelle – the man is dying and searching through his memories for an elusive taste he remembers and one which he knows he has to bring back to full flavour before he dies.
And so begins the journey around the most sumptuous gastronomic experiences of his life – food has played an important part in much of his life and has helped to reveal who he is, but the simplicity of the meals he eats with his family and those he is expected to eat as a food critic that highlights and mirrors the various differences in his life and on his outlook on life.
He sees himself as a failure and hates Paris and its people for taking him away from what he sees as his essential character. His success has made him hungry in more ways that one but the dishes served to him are not always appetising.
Some people it would seem would love nothing more than to sprinkle another less edible ingredient on his food….
French food
But as with each food and taste sensation he recalls, comes some of the most mouthwatering prose you will read –
“The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked, is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one’s mouth that brings with it every pleasure. The resistance of the skin – slightly taut, just enough; the luscious yield of the tissues, their seed-filled liqueur oozing to the corners of one’s lips, and that one wipes away without any fear of staining one’s fingers; this plump little globe unleashing a flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an adventure”
Streetview Maps
A) Paris - Rue de Grenelle
C) Paris - Rue de Grenelle Food stop
Where Next?
