Moveable Feasts: A Story of Paris in Twenty Meals

Food writer Newens (Cash and Curry) takes a charming tour of Paris by way of its rich and varied cuisines. After living in the city for 10 years and realizing “the Paris I could truly say I knew was embarrassingly small,” he set out to visit each of its 20 arrondissements and learn to make a dish that represented the history and cultural makeup of each one. What he found was a mix of fusion fare and stubborn tradition. In the 17th district, for example, he learned the arduous process of making a croissant, a pastry that existed “long before” the area was overrun by the current concentration of “bourgeois bohemian” inhabitants. In district 10, where farmers protested government efforts to cut food prices in the 2010s, he recreated the tartiflette, a hearty casserole eaten by both police and protesters. Newens also recalls being introduced to district 13’s Vietnamese communities, who, he contends, make the city’s best banh mi, a fusion food created after a wave of migrants from France moved to Saigon in the 1950s. Through his travels, Newens came to see the city as a place where French culinary tradition serves as the glue uniting disparate global influences. The result is a colorful portrait of a culturally rich city and its diverse histories. (Feb.)