Between Meals

Author A. J. Liebling
Narrator Rory Alexander
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 1 January 1970
Run Time 5 hours and 21 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography and non-fiction prose, Cultural studies: food and society, Memoirs, National and regional cuisine, Reportage, journalism or collected columns, Society and Social Sciences.

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While on a year of study in Paris in 1927, Liebling acquired the friendship and tutelage of Yves Mirande, 'one of the last great Gastronomes of France', beginning a joyous apprenticeship in the fine art of eating. Told with gluttonous joie de vivre, Between Meals expounds on the delights and pitfalls of a life dedicated to food, from bad rosé ('a pinkish cross between No-Cal and vinegar') to lobster a l'Américaine ('I have never personally inquired into the mysteries of its fabrication; I am content to love a masterpiece of painting without asking how the artist mixed his colors'), to a memorable stay at a Swiss slimming-clinic with a masseur named Sprudli. Witty, grouchy and full of gusto, Between Meals has the exquisite sensuality of a Michelin-starred meal and the delicious, catty wit of the perfect dinner guest. It is a lovesong to food, wine and Paris.

©2023 A. J. Liebling (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Wonderfully readable… This astonishing book is a rich dish itself… He was the prototype of all the greedy foodie bloggers, still outdoing the lot of them

Sunday Times

A droll account of the time Liebling spent eating and drinking in 1920s Paris… Just the thing for anyone who pines for a nicely roasted guinea fowl followed by a crisp, cold slice of vacherin

Observer

As a writer, [Liebling] manages the Proust-like achievement, increasingly enhanced by the passing of time, of resurrecting a vanished world through the remembrance of foods

Spectator

You can read Between Meals for its wonderful descriptions of food, but it is also a cultural history of Paris and a bildungsroman about an American immersed in Europe’s lascivious ways… Between Meals reads like a lament for a way of being. [Liebling] craved the best of everything, on his own terms, wherever and whenever he could find it

Telegraph

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