France

Jun 11, 2013 8:19:52 AM

Travel literature review: The Perfect Meal

The Perfect Meal by John Baxter

Rating: 2 out of 5 (5 for Boris)

Reviewed by Karyn Noble

It took me a long time to warm to the author of The Perfect Meal. A self-described ‘arrogant Australian’, John Baxter has lived in Paris for twenty years with his French wife Marie-Dominique. The loose premise for this book is that he wants to travel around France to find the perfect meal, one that involves resuscitating traditional ingredients and classic methods of cooking and eating. But the opening pages are quite awkward, full of clumsy transitions and strange bragging about one of his famous friends; it seemed rather pointless and I seriously considered not continuing. That’s until I was introduced to Baxter’s terribly intriguing friend, Boris. Only then did the book truly come alive for me. As the author so rightfully says, ‘There is a book to be written about my assignations with Boris.’ Boris is so enjoyable that I found myself reading pages about him aloud to friends. Then I started to realise that it wasn’t just Boris himself but the comedic, underplayed writing of him that made his fleeting appearances so engaging. So I grudgingly warmed to the author, despite the still annoying ex-pat-abroad comments like: ‘Australia had no distinctive national tipple. Gullet-numbing iced lager satisfies 99 per cent of the population, leaving a fragile but discriminating fraction to enjoy the country’s excellent wines.’

I almost started to enjoy Baxter when he became more self-deprecating: ‘I once decided to liven up an Australian barbecue by serving a kebab, not on the conventional metal skewer but with the meat impaled on a sword, and carried to the table in flames.’ His recounting of this failed attempt (‘I tossed the charred pot holders into the garbage, followed by my shirt with the burned cuffs.’) and an unfortunate staging of a moules éclade (raw mussels spread on a stone table, covered in pine needles and set on fire) in his Parisian backyard where plumes of flame nearly engulfed his neighbours’ gardens, made me laugh out loud. I’d become fully engaged with the book by now, eagerly awaiting the denouement, what I assumed would be his preparation of the ‘ideal banquet using the “lost” dishes of France’.

Then it all went very strange. There he was viewing an ox roast in Bugnicourt when suddenly the book ended. What? There was ‘The Menu’ he’d spent the whole book wittering about printed at the end, a compilation of recipes and then another little sly stab at Australia’s cuisine that made me wince: ‘My gratitude to my wife…had she not brought me to France, I would know nothing of great food.’ I felt rather let down. If his ‘perfect meal’ was always going to be imaginary, best make that clearer from the start. Instead, within one sentence on the final page he has ‘mentally compiled it’ and ‘looks forward to eating it one day’. As a foodie and Francophile, I loved a lot of this book and learnt so many fascinating things (the history of Coronation Chicken; why blackberries are feared in France; aristocrats ate with their fingers not forks so Downton Abbey is riddled with script errors; scandalous tales of revenge between London’s Savoy and Paris’ Ritz hotels; 17th-century monks were the first to add milk to coffee; the origins of Melba Toast/Peach Melba; ad infinitum) but it’s difficult to champion them when they are bookended with disappointment. Fingers crossed there’s a book about Boris in the pipeline.

Karyn Noble is a senior editor in Lonely Planet’s Melbourne office. She once spent a glorious month travelling around France but, given the folly of youth, undoubtedly spent more time in bars than bistros. 

Read more travel literature reviews here.

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