Restaurant Books

The Bluebird has been a mainstay of the Nashville music scene for years. Here's the story of how it all happened from the owner Amy Kurland to the performers who make the Bluebird what it is today. This is a great read and a must of the collector of country music history.

Just a pleasure to look at. There is no pretense and a lot of funny stuff.

Right now, my social life is pathetically nonexistent, but if you're looking for a guide to local eateries for that special first date, this guide is absolutely priceless. It has all the information you need to know about the most popular and acclaimed restaraunts in the local area. The book doesn't dig deep and tap into other, smaller places that may have passed the radar screen, but it's still an important guide that's as essential as a dictionary.

The Zagat guide gives a good general overview of the Boston restaraunt scene, with ratings and quotations submitted by diners themselves. What a great idea!! It also has excellent crossreferenced indices. The one flaw in the system is that the guides tend to exclude the smaller, newer, or lesser known restaraunts... but perhaps this is because we Bostonians are a secretive lot who want to keep the real gems for ourselves... just kidding! In the back of every Zagat guide is a response card to send back to Zagat, so that your opinions can be included in the next issue.

This is a terrific book: a great concept (they recommend children's or adult books to read while you're eating) & interesting writing. Every entry's different enough, so the book's amusing all the way though. As a native New Mexican, I found lots of restaurants to try that I'd never heard of - & as a librarian, new books to enjoy. Highly recommended!
Suzy Sultemeier
Retired librarian with the Albuquerque Public Libraries

Expertly co-authored by New Mexico-based freelance writer Kathy Barco & Valerie Nye (Assistant Professor and Serials Librarian at the College of Santa Fe), Breakfast Santa Fe Style: A Dining Guide To Fancy, Funky, And Family Friendly Restaurants is an informative, fun, and easy-to-use reference collection of restaurants, diners, pubs, grills, and clubs of the Santa Fe area. Presenting readers with an expansive compendium of local favorites, hard to find particulars, and homey, "family friendly" restaurants, Breakfast Santa Fe Style offers a quick and simple method of finding "Fancy, Funky, Family Friendly, and Fast" places, suitable for the likes of any Santa Fe culinary connoisseur. Breakfast Santa Fe Style is very highly recommended for visitors and residents of the Santa Fe area for its extensive and acute knowledge of the best local dining facilities that will enhance any personal or family outing.

Jim Quinn writes about what goes on behind the scenes in a variety of restaurants - top of the line, a diner, a pizza place, a place at the Jersey Shore, a cheese steak shop, a Chinese restaurant, and even McDonalds. The first two pieces, on the diner and top restaurant, are fascinating. As an extra, he gives hints on what to look out for while eating out, and how to review a restaurant. An absolutely fascinating book, recommended for anyone who eats out.

"The last days of _haute cuisine_" is a phrase tossed off in passing by Jim Quinn in this classic book, most of whose chapters are his skillfully rendered accounts of time spent behind the scenes at a diverse array of restaurants, observing the foibles and cultures. Tell Erhardt working furiously in his restaurant kitchen in Chicago and dispensing "general advice about life and vegetables." Teenage girls at a Philly cheese-steak house firing orders for "Cheese with" amid comparing notes on a boy (evidently dippy). Quinn catches the tempo of these milieus beautifully -- he is a storyteller at heart, who is also knowledgeable about food and restaurants, exactly the sort of person who can write well about them. The chapters were published as articles in _Harper's_ and elsewhere before compilation into this book. The penultimate chapter, "Why it tastes so bad," indicts those parts of the "foodservice" industry that are traditionally so prominent in advertisements in _Restaurant Business_ magazine (which Quinn also mentions). They gave us frozen shrimp with the breading pre-dyed in a range of appetizing toasty shades even before it hits the hot Frymax, and those machine-made potato pieces "with just enough of the skin left on" that invaded all the upper-end chain restaurants about the time the book was written, 20 years ago. This chapter is delightful, and horrible.

At this moment this book is out of print (as of course are most good books at any given moment) although like many others, it can be found used. A pity because it has lost none of its relevance. I should have gotten more copies for lending and gifts. (Maybe if I order enough of them, it will be reprinted again, as with Wechsberg's _Blue Trout and Black Truffles_ a few years ago.)

"The last days of _haute cuisine_" was a casual sentence in Quinn's book. Recently Patric Kuh wrote a worthy new book about restaurants and used the same sentence for his title, but did not even mention Quinn (for reasons Kuh would know better than I). Quinn nevertheless is part of the context of new US writing on restaurants, whether or not its authors bother to know (or acknowledge) this. Here as elsewhere, the best writing on a subject is not necessarily the very latest. Rarely is this truer than about food, as witness Mary Anna DuSablon's remark that the 850 cookbooks in print in the US in 1962 became 6000 by 1984, with two new titles a day published. Does anyone seriously imagine a corresponding growth of new ideas, or imagine (conversely) that this contemporary scrambling to publish reflects anything negative on earlier classics?

This is consistantly the best cookbook I have ever used! Every recipe is excellant!

An amazing collection of over one hundred recipes from Arizona's finest restaurants. Each recipe is presented in basic terms that make it easy for home cooks to enjoy their favorites. Breast of Pheasant from the Grand Canyon Lodge, Southwest Corn Chowder from Vincent's on Camelback, Rustic Pear Pie from the Biltmore, plus many more mouthwatering recipes.

A few years ago I read another book about Paris cafés and bistros in which the author claimed that after reading his book (and solely on that basis), you should be able to pick out a Paris café to make your own. I don't think he quite pulled off that feat, but I have adopted that idea as one handy standard by which to measure the three or four other books about Paris cafés I've read since then. Of all of them, "Café Life Paris" comes, by a good stretch, closest to making me feel ready to call dibs on one or two cafés I'm ready to settle into.

Some of these Paris café/brasserie/bistro books focus on the distinctive food served in these establishments, while others are more interested in description through words or photography. "Café Life Paris" is of the second group, and Christine and Dennis Graf give us full and evocative depictions of several dozen cafés. They divide them into groups ("Great and glamorous places," "Neighborhood cafés," etc.) and explain not only the décor and type of people a given café serves, but also the general feel or élan of the café and the surrounding neighborhood. Given that each café is described in just a few paragraphs and maybe one or two photos by Juliana Spear, it's a remarkably concise and evocative job the three have done.

I've no idea when I'll get back to Paris, though I'm vaguely confident I will someday. When I do, I think I'll want to check out Café de Flore, Le Sélect, or Le Rouquet. Based on what I've read here, I think I'll feel pretty comfortable there.

Expertly researched and co-authored by Christine and Dennis Graf, Cafe Life Paris: A Guidebook To The Cafes And Bars Of The City Of Light is an insightful and engaging survey of the many wonderful cafes and bars to be found in and around in the beautiful city of Paris. Superbly illustrated throughout, Cafe Life Paris showcases each unique and tasteful stop, offering readers a descriptive introduction to what these cafes and bars have to offer, including a variety of entertainments ranging from music, to philosophical discussions, to cabaret performances. There are cafes which draw students, others which are undiscovered treasures known only to the locals, some famed and a "must" on ever tourist itinerary, and more. Cafe Life Paris is very strongly recommended as compendium of beautiful, romantic, entertaining, and colorful cafes and bars which is perfect for planning any visit from a weekend excursion to a month long holiday in this Parisian "City of Lights".

Many good recipes, now we know the secrets of the cafes. Sadly, some are no longer in business but fortunately live on in the book. The Snicker salad recipe is worth the price of the book.

The cooperative work of Midwest folklorist Joanne Raetz Stuttgen and food columnist and cookbook author Terese Allen, "Cafe Wisconsin Cookbook" is a compilation of the history, anecdotes and recipes associated with some of Wisconsin's very best small town cafes ranging from Boscobel to Glennwood City, and from Stoughton to Sturgeon Bay. The recipes are organized around the categories of Breakfast, Baked Goods, Soups, Salads, Daily Specials, Sandwiches and Burgers, Sid Dishes and Extras, Pies and Other Desserts. Now any family cook can duplicate Wisconsin's Main Street eateries with respect to menu items ranging from pies, meatloaf and fish fries, to casseroles, burgers, and blue plate specials. "Cafe Wisconsin Cookbook" is an enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, professional, and community library regional cookbook collections!

borrowing from the other review, I'm biased as well. ok..he was my grandfather too. Anyway, this is a fantastic book that brings me back to when we grandchildren all tried to fit on the dumb-waiter to go from the first floor to the basement. I suppose that this is not particularly helpful to the objective peruser, but I can tell you that this book is filled with love and anecdotes that are not reserved to one family, but to a love of food and to a love of life. You can't go wrong. Drop a couple of bucks and get a look into a great man's life, family and mind.

I got this book as a gift from the first printing...you see, Lawson Aldrich was my grandfather. I re-read the book recently, however, and found that not only are the recipes sound, but the stories within are priceless as well; I believe that someone not of my family can enjoy the creation of good food contained in the book, and the exquisite tales too. (And darn if I didn't get some of those creative food skills from you grampa...we miss you)

When I landed in LA, it took me a good 3 months to find a series of haunts, owing simply to the sheer size of the place. This book breaks it down by neighborhood, "scene," and type of venue, so that the only other guide you need is a Thomas guide (the ubiquitous, highly detailed road map that occupies the back seat of every car in Southern California). Great insider info, seedy backstories, and a dead-on dissection of the various scenes make this a great introduction to America's most puzzling megalopolis. Fodors would be hard pressed to top this.

Great book, especially for the young and young at heart. Unlike most other city guides I see this one really appears to be written by insiders who genuinely seem to know what they're talking about. Useful for both visitors to the city as well as people who are already in LA. The book is well structured with separate sections on eating out, nightlife, shopping, culture & arts, lodgings and many more. If you want to know where the current "in" places are and the real inside information on LA then this is the guide for you.

Terrific book that goes with me on every trip around Colorado. This will get you to most every historic/interesting bar in the State.

Terrific book that goes with me on every trip around Colorado. This will get you to most every historic/interesting bar in the State.