Victor Sack wrote:
> A 'French Chef' Whose Appeal Doesn't Translate
>
> By MAÏA de la BAUME
>
> International Herald Tribune
>
> PARIS - Julia Child may have been America's best-known "French chef,"
> but here in Paris few know her fabled cookbooks, let alone her name.
>
> Posters for the movie "Julie & Julia" were plastered across the city
> before its release here on Wednesday. But the movie was being
> anticipated more for Meryl Streep's performance as Ms. Child than for
> any particular interest in Ms. Child, the principal author of "Mastering
> the Art of French Cooking," who died in 2004.
>
> Ms. Child's book - beloved by American cooks for almost 50 years and now
> a best-seller because of the film - has never been translated into
> French, said Anne Perrier, a manager at Galignani, an English-language
> bookshop here. "It's the vision of a revisited France, adapted to the
> American taste, at a time when tastes were lifeless," she said.
>
> In an interview in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro last week, Ms.
> Streep said: "What surprises me is that the French don't know her at
> all. While for Americans, she was one of the best ambassadors of France
> ... since Lafayette!"
>
> French food experts are divided about Ms. Child and her cooking. Some
> say she caricatured French cuisine in her book and cooking show, making
> it seem too heavy and formal. Others believe she demystified it and see
> her as a role model in France, where cooking shows are rare and cuisine
> is not necessarily viewed as something anyone can interpret.
>
> "Julia Child's cuisine is academic and bourgeois," said Julie Andrieu, a
> television personality and cookbook author. "It shows that in America,
> the cliché of beef, baguette and canard farci remains."
> For Jean-Claude Ribaut, the food critic at Le Monde, Ms. Child was more
> like "a mediator who promoted the French lifestyle in the United States,
> but had no influence on restaurateurs."
>
> But some chefs say they hope that the film will rehabilitate French
> cooking in the United States. Gilles Epié, a chef who met Ms. Child in
> Los Angeles at a birthday party for her in the early 1990s, thinks
> French cooking has been tarnished as stodgy.
>
> "Americans have really slammed French cuisine," Mr. Epié said. "They
> think we only eat boeuf bourguignon and rabbit stew, which is wrong."
>
> Before taking over the Citrus Étoile, in the Eighth Arrondissement, Mr.
> Epié ran the Los Angeles restaurant L'Orangerie for more than three
> years. He remembered with distaste the strictness of American health
> rules about food.
>
> "My fish shop in Santa Monica smelled like a pharmacy" instead of like
> fresh fish, he said. "And when I asked for a three-month-old baby lamb,
> like you can find here, they thought I was crazy and nearly called the
> police."
>
> But some French chefs say they believe that Ms. Child, through the film,
> could have an impact on contemporary French cooking, or at least make
> boeuf bourguignon, a traditional dish currently absent from most French
> menus, fashionable again.
>
> "She explains her recipes like a housewife, but she knows how to do it
> and she does it genuinely," said Guy Savoy, owner of the restaurant that
> bears his name in Paris. He met Ms. Child in 1981 in Massachusetts and
> remembered her as "a real character, gentle and affable."
>
> Ms. Andrieu, the cookbook author, said that despite Ms. Child's clichéd
> recipes, her style could be defined as a "combination of scientific and
> empirical virtues" that helped explain why Americans wrote better
> cookbooks than the French.
>
> "The French think that they are natural-born cooks; they prepare a dish
> off the top of their heads, without testing it," she said. "In France,
> we rush over explanations."
>
> After watching "Julie & Julia," Ms. Andrieu said, she felt compelled to
> go home and make boeuf bourguignon according to Ms. Child's recipe. "I
> cut the flour in half, and it turned out to be the best I had ever
> made," she said.
>
> Mr. Epié even thinks that Ms. Child's story should encourage the French
> to discuss their cuisine in a more democratic way.
>
> He is one of the few respected chefs in Paris to offer American food on
> his menu, including his signature dish: a crab cake à la française,
> prepared with shellfish oil instead of mayonnaise.
>
> "I want to do Julia Child, but Julia Child with real fish, real lobster,
> with eels to shuck and rabbit to bone," he said. "That's my dream."

Very interesting perspective. Thanks, Victor.

--
Jean B.