My Place At the Table

Starred review from May 3, 2021
In this rich debut memoir, food writer Lobrano (Hungry for Paris) traces his lifelong love affair with food. He begins his story with a tender ode he penned in the second grade to “the most perfect sandwich,” the BLT. “What I didn’t know then was that food would become my muse,” he writes. After a memorable trip to Paris with his parents at age 15, he became swept up in the fantasy of leaving his Connecticut home to live there. That dream came true in 1986, when a friend helped him land a job writing about food for Women’s Wear Daily in Paris. Tucking into meals in cafés, bistros, and private homes, and perusing markets throughout France, Lobrano immersed himself in the nation’s cuisine, “sort of a big casserole of all the country’s regional kitchens.” Meanwhile, he witnessed the birth of the modern bistro, with its “vivid and nimbly creative cooking.” When his writing caught the eye of Gourmet’s then-editor Ruth Riechel, she hired him in 1999 to be the magazine’s Paris correspondent. Appended with a selection of his favorite restaurant reviews, Lobrano’s story is inspiring, and his prose lush and inviting. Readers will savor every last page. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.