French Toast from New York Times - June 1, 2008

We've Always Had Paris...and Provence Paperback
We've Always Had Paris...and Provence Paperback

Many culturally hungry Americans dream about moving to France. “We’ve Always Had Paris ... and Provence” is the story of two who did so and have lived happily ever after. Patricia Wells, known best for her seminal “Food Lover’s Guide to Paris,” and Walter Wells, a high-ranking editor of The International Herald Tribune from 1980 to 2005, have written a he-said, she-said memoir, volleying back and forth to tell how a girl from Wisconsin and a boy from South Carolina met while working at The New York Times and went to France in 1980 on what they assumed would be temporary journalistic assignments. They found their lives’ calling as expatriates, transcending prejudice to be accepted and even revered by the foreign culture they embraced. Walter was awarded the French Legion of Honor. Patricia recounts with no small measure of self-amazement the time she showed the Frenchman Joël Robuchon, “the greatest chef in the world,” how to make her special bouillabaisse.

The couple describe France’s allure with converts’ enthusiasm. Of her early research for the guide book, Patricia writes: “Everything was new, bright, exciting. There were so many first-time experiences, so many thrilling new tastes. ... Many a night, as Walter walked in the door from work I would shout with joy, ‘I just had one of the best days of my life!’ Walter would respond, ‘You say that three times a week.’” Regarding their decision to stay abroad, he writes: “Why Paris? What was it about the city that pulled us there and kept us? Well, how high is the sky?”

Patricia’s accounts of Provence are full of storybook moments. Of their house, Chanteduc, she rhapsodizes: “We did plant a butterfly bush, a buddleia, that we cut back in winter. From spring until late autumn its brilliant purple flowers attract white and yellow butterflies that dance around over the terrace. One day the Three Tenors were singing loud and clear from the speakers in the corners of my kitchen, and I would swear that the butterflies were dancing to the music. It made me cry with happiness.” Of Provence itself, “It symbolized all the essential elements of the happiness we sought in life: friends, family, food and feasts.” Walter’s description of Chanteduc as it was when they bought it is less starry-eyed: “The bathrooms were inadequate, the windows didn’t shut out the wind, and those tangles of wire in the basement meant that the electricity needed attention, too.” Although he notes that “even a fantasy life has its share of uphill struggle,” Walter is smitten in his own way, rhapsodizing about all the merchants of which they become clients fidèles, creating for him and his wife a sense of community.

A memoir is intrinsically self-centered, at best offering a fresh vision of the world through other eyes, at worst reading like an overlong Christmas letter. Patricia Wells’s recipes, which follow every chapter, are indeed delicious and unusual, some so evocative that you can practically smell the lavender fields outside the kitchen window and feel the chill of the mistral. Appearances of Robuchon, Julia Child and a Provençal truffle hunter are frothy peaks in the story. But when the Wellses focus on themselves the cream curdles. The book is overloaded with pictures of them separately and together, beaming out at us with politicians’ pasted-on smiles, perfectly outfitted for a night on the town or a morning in the garden, always looking just right and manically happy. It is not just the canned pictures that make it difficult to relate to our omnipresent bibliohosts the way it is so easy to do in such disarming memoirs as Peter Mayle’s “Year in Provence” and Adam Gopnik’s “From Paris to the Moon.” They write like ad men trying to sell readers on the excellence of their self-proclaimed fantasy lives, from the distinctive wines they make to Patricia’s triumphs as a long-distance runner. Without irony, Walter quotes the cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli observing their shopping habits in France: “You originated the Dean & DeLuca lifestyle.” He then sincerely boasts that their lifestyle is even better than that, because the excellent butcher delivers their leg of lamb to Patricia’s car, “parked far away.” What might have been a delicious invitation to a banquet winds up reading like a brochure for an expensive gated community

stern-600
stern-600

Do we need to know that Patricia’s personal maintenance routine consists of “weekly visits to the hairdresser for upkeep and a manicure, twice a week to the massage therapist, a weekly facial, a monthly pedicure”? She reveals, “I even multitask when I have a facial, having facial hair removed and putting my eyelashes up on rollers so they have an even curl.” The payoff for her beauty routine comes “when Walter and I passed a woman who clearly did not subscribe to the maintenance theory. Her hair was a mess, and dirty as well. She walked with difficulty, overburdened by excess weight. Her clothes were rumpled and too tight. She wore no makeup and the deep wrinkles on her face suggested she was a lifelong smoker. Walter turned to me and said quietly, ‘Thank you for taking care of yourself.’” L’addition, s’il vous plaît!

Jane and Michael Stern are the authors of “Roadfood.”

What We’re Reading: We’ve Always Had Paris . . . and Provence from Washingtonian.com - June 4, 2008 - What We're Reading

We've Always Had Paris...and Provence Paperback
We've Always Had Paris...and Provence Paperback

Who hasn’t dreamed of leaving everything behind and moving to Paris? For Patricia and Walter Wells, that dream became a reality when they packed up their lives in New York and moved to the City of Light more than 25 years ago. As the young couple negotiated their way through the initial loneliness, figured out a foreign language, and learned the Kafkaesque rules of French etiquette, they fell in love with the country and their temporary stint turned permanent. We’ve Always Had Paris . . . and Provence (HarperCollins, $26.95) is their joint account of their life together in France, an adventure enhanced by friends, engaging work, and above all, food.

In the 1970s, Wells wrote about food for The Washingtonian. She went on to become food critic for the International Herald Tribune and author of The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris as well as several bestselling cookbooks, eating her way across France in the process. These meals form the backbone of this meandering memoir as she interviews brooding chefs and travels to restaurants both famous and infamous in search of great food. In alternating chapters, her husband, Walter—who retired as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in 2005—adds his witty and perceptive observations about les Français and life as an expat. Though a “scrapbook” of reminiscences may sound like a recipe for pretension, the Wellses have a gentle, self-deprecating tone that prevents the book from lapsing into self-indulgence.

Sprinkled through the book are more than 30 recipes inspired by the Wellses’ memories. If you’ve ever wondered what a renowned food critic eats at home—or how she maintains her trim figure—the answer lies somewhere between Patricia’s lemon chicken with roasted onions and the five miles she runs every morning. Inspired by Patricia’s description of that “simple” yet “sublime” roast chicken, I prepared my own bird, stuffing it with lemons and thyme before popping it into the oven for an hour or so. I followed her detailed instructions carefully, flipping the bird from side to side to back—and the result was a crisp and golden chicken, the moist meat gently flavored by the herbs and citrus. The next day, I tossed the leftover meat into the suggested “celery, tarragon, spinach, and chicken salad,” a crunchy, bright mixture enlivened by the acidic bite of capers and pickles. My husband and I ate our simple meal accompanied by the recommended Sauvignon Blanc and flickering candlelight. It wasn’t quite Paris or Provence, yet somehow I still felt touched by the Wells’s joie de vivre.

The Provence Cookbook Reviews