American Bistro Cookbook

American Bistro Cookbook is a personal sampling of the best new recipes adapted for entertaining at home. The cookbook features recipes from American bistro restaurants. 

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Format: Hardcover with dust jacket, 176 pages. 

Copyright: 1986 

Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary 

Author: Irena Chalmer 

ISBN: 9780809250479

$10.00 $8.99

Additional Details

Description: Something very new and exciting is happening with American restaurants ... something never seen before, something brilliant! Irena Chalmers calls it American Bistro, and in this stunning book, she documents this glorious phenomenon. 

With generous help from her friends, Chalmers offers a cross-country tour of the smartest new restaurants to be found, each one an idea of hospitality brought to polished realization in every detail: beautiful interiors, gleaming surfaces, handsome china and glass, thoughtful and friendly service, brilliant chefs, beauty in presentation and -- beyond all other considerations -- ravishing food based on bold new concepts. 

Chalmers, whose books, articles, reviews, and speeches have made her reputation as the most thoughtful and searching of contemporary observers of the American mood about food, believes that the emergence of this new, fresh style marks an important plateau in the evolution of American cooking. There are exemplary recipes, and creative menus here, as well as tales of restaurateurs in the pursuit of dreams and dazzling photographs of dreams come true. 

"The revolution in the way we are eating food today," says Chalmers, "is still at the evolutionary stage, and it is a marvelously intriguing game to try to sample it all, and all at once. There are instant gratifications of new pleasures and indulgences. We are seeing everything on the same menu, from sauteed breast of duck with fresh foie gras and cornmeal pancakes with caviar to Southern fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy." 

In all this eclecticism Chalmers finds a generalization about American society today: "We are, most of all, having a glorious time," she says, "sharing in the abundance of the good earth, shouting applause and encouragement for the chefs, and spurring them on to new creations to delight us." And all of this excitement is brought home in more than 100 recipes Chalmers most admires, from chefs from coast to coast. 

An exciting book on a most original subject, American Bistro looks closely at the new restaurants and the new cooking and, through that focus, says volumes about how we live today. 

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Condition: Dust jacket has a curled top edge and a touch of wear at the corner tips. 

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