I have a extensive cookbook collection and this is my favorite book hands down. Everything I've made from it has been very good. Some of the recipes are a bit labor intensive but I've found that the end result is worth the effort. The whoopie pies are a bit of heaven on earth!

I was so pleased to receive this book through Pamela Ball. She shipped it so quickly and in fabulous condition. The whole book is worth every penny. So sad that it's out of print at the moment. They should consider putting this book into circulation again soon. The recipes are wonderful. A crucial part of a cookbook collection.

The loin of pork with the coriander crust is out of this world, and a regular at my house. Also, try the mashed yams and apples, which pairs nicely with the pork recipe.

I bought this because of my love for clambakes and my quest for how to accomplish this in my Chicago backyard.

But this book turned out to be more than seafood. I rely on it for the great old-time, country dessert, salad, etc. recipes.

Along with the unique, delicious and easy recipes, it tells the stories surrounding the food.

Great for food connoisseurs.

I love to cook! I always thought that fish prepared simply was best. This Loomis book really turned around my experience. She takes you on tour through areas where fish is caught and cooked. We get the recipes of fisherman (they know how to do this right) and also some incredible sauce recipes. I love Sauce Piquant with Redfish. Try it and see if you don't agree. I turn to this book so often for advice and recipes. It's a must have if you want to do Seafood right.

I bought The New England Clam Shack Cookbook for 2 reasons. First, I have several of Brooke Dojny's cookbooks and know the recipes to be easy and reliable. They do work. Second, I live in Maine and my family has a great fondness for clam shacks. Now, during the winter, when the clam shacks are closed, we can have fried clams and chowder at home. The bonus is the wonderful descriptions of the people who cook all of that great food.

The Clam Shack cookbook is like taking an entertaining and nostaligic, New England road trip - without leaving home! And if you do leave home in pursuit of the ultimate summer eating activity, this book directs you to the right places for the real clam shack experience. Nothing is more disappointing than stopping at a sea food eatery that looks authentic and then finding leathery lobster rolls and greasy fried clams! Brooke Dojny has done the leg work and identifies where to find the best summer seafood- from CT to Maine. This book is not only a fun read, with cute illustrations and fascinating back ground stories on the Clam Shack families, but it is also a serious cook book. These recipes really work! I'm not an experienced cook and I found them realistic, easy to follow and delicious. I was immediately inspired to make the clam chowder and it was excellent. I was also pleased to find sections on seafood basics like the best way to cook lobster. I thoroughly recommend this book for your kitchen and think it would make a delightful summer hostess gift.

Brooke Dojny's latest cookbook is a joy! It took me right back to my many childhood summers on Cape Cod--fried clams eaten with a wooden "prong," sitting at a wooden picnic table under an umbrella with the roar of the tide in the background. The recipes are great, but even if you don't cook one thing out of the book, it's worth it for the down home culinary tour of the Northeastern shore. Can't wait to follow its clam shack route up to Maine this summer. Fun! Fun! Fun!
P.S.: If you don't have Dojny's last, "The New England Cookbook," you're missing out on some great cooking (and eating).

The foods in here are tasty and simple. There are stories, tips and tricks that add so much to the experience of cooking these recipes- you really get a feel for the people of the regions represented. If this book has a shortcoming, it's that the south/central regions of France are a little under represented, but there are TONS of good recipes from the north.

This is one cookbook that I can find recipes easily without bookmarks- how? By the stains and stiffened pages the book has from enduring my ownership!

Though I'd always fancied myself a good cook, I could never make a pie/tart crust,(the dough would tear as I rolled it out, among other frustrations), until this book. Armed with a food processor and this great book, it's a snap.

Having said that, it should be noted the recipes are easy, and a senual delight. Moreover, Ms. Loomis gives one a cultural taste of rural France, which is provocative.

Check out her Italian Farmhouse Cookbook as well. It is luscious.

I received this cookbook at my Bridal Shower. I had never heard of the author before, but began to read the cookbook as a book. I was most impressed by the contents.

Each recipe gives us a short story to where the recipe originated...location in France, and the family that makes it.

I enjoyed the cookbook immensely as the author lives in France, yet is American, so she can explain how to replace those ingredients that we don't have here in the United States.

Later, I began cooking from the book. Let me tell you, I was getting raving reviews from my fellow co-workers and since, the baby group I joined.

I would recommned this book. Her recipes are easy to read and not complicated at all. Plus, it gives you the feeling that you are somewhere else...far away from your cares...to a more simpler time...the French Countryside!

If you are interested in "real" Italian food from the farmhouses or peasant kitchens around Italy you will find this cookbook a great reference tool. It is evident that Susan Herrmann Loomis spent a great deal of time researching the recipes and culinary history while writing this book. As the Italian Food Host at BellaOnline and an avid cookbook collector of anything related to Italian cuisine, I would highly recommend this book for someone collecting Italian cookbooks. If it were your first Italian cookbook however I would encourage you to do more research. The one glaring negative of this book was that it did not have a single food photo. I can't imagine that in this day and age that publishers have not figured out that great food photos sell cookbooks!

Having recently spent three weeks in Tuscany, I was eager to find a cookbook to help me duplicate the tastes I'd experienced. I knew French Farmhouse Cookbook was a marvel and decided to try this, much to my pleasure.

The recipes are perfect, to my way of thinking, clearly written, easily followed, and of course, as with all Loomis' recipes, simply delicious.

These are comfort foods, though salubrious, relying heavily on fresh ingredients, but don't most good recipes! Now, I'm more eager than ever to grow my own produce, mushroom hunt, keep a window, herb garden and find an excellent butcher.

I recently purchased the Italian Farmhouse Cookbook, after reading five reviews listed here on Amazon! Since four of the five were extremely complimentary, and one very negative, I with only slight hesitation ordered the book.....

Am I ever glad I did! Obviously the negative review (from a reader supposedly in New York) was totally inappropriate and wrong! This cook book is fantastic!

I love Thai, Italian, and Mexican cooking (particularly low fat versions) and have a library of over 50 of the best cook books I could find. At the time I ordered this book, I also purchased a "famous" large format Italian cookbook, with large color pictures of each recipe item, and gorgeous pictures of the Italian countryside.

But Loomis' book is superior to that or any other Italian cookbook I've seen. If you demand glossy color pictures of Italy, don't buy this cook book! But if you want to actually FEEL as though you know the best Italian cooking and what the factors and feelings are in creating it, then buy it.

The recipes are astoundingly good and the writing is wonderful. Her descriptions of the people and cooks she encountered on her journey through the Italian countryside are wonderful and her recipes are the same. The author's fine writing style, along with the wisdom and authentic cooking ideas she gathered on her visits to various homes, provide such a strong foundation for the beautiful recipes themselves.

This is a "must have" Italian cookbook, no question about it!

This is the only guide that I brought with me to Paris for my 2 months stay there. Here's what I like about this book:

1. The food dictionary on the back! Eventhough I can speak/write/read some French that I don't need to carry regular dictionary around, the food terms sometimes confusing and this book has an excellent section on it.

2. The recipes are worth trying. I tried her recipes for madeleine and financiers, both turned out excellent.

3. Ms. Wells not only give restaurant guides but also specialty shops, bakery, etc. Some of the recommendations are well secluded from mainstream tourists. A trully excellent find.

Here's what I don't like about this book:

1. Many of the restaurants featured are expensive, especially for 2 months stay in Paris. I think there's plenty of cheap and reasonably good food that I could find. I used Ms. Well's recommendation for weekends/special occasions.

2. I think this book is a bit too heavy/thick to carry around.

3/3/03 I Purchased "The Second Edition" of The Food Lover's Guide to Paris in May,1990 from a [local] Book store.....It not only gives insight into Paris(customs and costs) ,by Paris's equivalent to our USA zip codes locations(e.g 8th and 9th Arrondissements:location of Arc de Triomphe),but also by food specialty shops with a French/English Food Glossary; and two index alphabetical and food recipe).Patricia Welles's 4th Edition can only enhance a 'true masterpiece",which I found her 2nd Edition to be. Whether you're traveling or not ,you'll pick up the book just to read or use some of the many recipes in its contents.3/3/02 abj

As I consider "Food Lovers Guide to Paris" an old friend, I was really pleased to see a timely update to one of the most useful travel books I know. I highly recommend it to anyone with a good appetite who is contemplating a visit to the City of Light.

In this fourth version of her classic, Ms Wells again does a superb job of ferreting out and reviewing top notch restaurants, cafes, bakeries, pastry shops, wine bars, candy makers, markets, and a myriad of specialty shops - anything and everything that has to do with food in the food capital of the world. Some notable names from the third edition have been dropped and some exciting new ones added.

Some restaurants have been in all four guides, but an update was certainly necessary for those who enjoy the finest of fine cuisine: three years ago, the celebrated superstar chef Joel Robuchon retired. Today, several of his talented former assistants are now running their own kitchens in Paris, and their food can be absolutely stunning. My girlfriend and I visited two of these restaurants last autumn, (during the wild mushroom season, of course!), and were blown away by the exquisite food at both establishments.

Those looking for dining bargains will not be disappointed, as a good many of the recommended restaurants are not only quite affordable, but also offer wonderful value for your money. Good food, simply but imaginatively prepared. Included amongst the latter are several wonderful regional restaurants, if, for instance, you would like to try some of the specialties of the Southwest or Provence.

As there are other serious restaurant guides available, perhaps the most uniquely useful chapters in the book are those devoted to specialty shops. Whether you are looking for fresh truffles, old cookbooks, designer china, or the most specialized and esoteric of cookware, using this book you will be able to find it.

As another reviewer pointed out that the book features a number of recipes (I think the reviewer was peeved by this), I thought I would add my two cents: every recipe I have tried from other editions of this book has been at least very good; some have been superb.

Finally, as usual, there there are many, many explanatory notes and a very good glossary that covers a large amount of French food terminology. First time visitors to Paris will find both the notes and the glossary VERY useful.

Lommis does a nice job of describing the details of life in Louviers, providing some pleasant "escapist" leisure reading for Francophiles like myself. The book has some good French country recipes, but overall is a disappointing Peter Mayle derivative that fails to show us anything new or interesting about France.

And when Loomis isn't rehashing the now-trite cliches of adjusting to living in France (driving habits; pharmacists; bureaucracy; difficulties in renovating a house; etc. etc.), she's busy convincing us how happy and successful she is. Her self-congratulatory tone quickly became tiresome after the first few chapters--her perfect/beautiful/wonderful/joyous/lovely friends, family, and house were just a little too "Martha Stewart" for me. Yuk!

I'm giving On Rue Tatin four stars because it evokes the mood and feel of rural France. Having spent a lot of time in Normandy and Paris, I recognized many of Loomis's characters and experiences. Loomis clearly has a deep love for France and French culture, and the book was at its best in describing her friendships and experiences in learning more about her adopted home. I wish there had been much more about her friends Edith and Bernard, her fascinating and sometimes frustrating neighbors, and her cultural acclimation.

As many reviewers have pointed out, the story of how Loomis and her husband refurbished their _maison bourgeoise_ was very interesting, and of course the recipes seem luscious (though Loomis has a sweet but irritating habit of describing each of her friend's cooking as "the best I've ever had"). After the house was finished, though, the book started getting tedious, and I felt that Loomis was trying to make pages for a publisher. There is an ENTIRE chapter on the process Loomis went through in buying a stove. Even if one is a professional cook who cares deeply about such things, Loomis's prose isn't exciting enough to make the tale interesting. Instead it reads like a shaggy-dog story about appliance shopping. A lot of the book feels like similar filler, with irrelevant detail about Loomis' problems finding school supplies for her son, explaining what a baby shower is to her friends, going on doctors' and dentists' appointments in Paris, and so forth. The domesticity of Loomis' life, filled with friends and children, is a nice contrast to the typical Anglo-Saxon-abroad-drinking-and-eating memoir, but often in Rue Tatin the domestic details overwhelm the story. Still, it's a quick, fun read, and one I wouldn't hesitate to stuff into my suitcase if I were heading for a couple of weeks' holiday in France.

Susan Loomis fell in love with France, the French and French cooking when she was a young student 20 years ago. After an apprenticeship at La Varenne de Cuisine in Paris and her subsequent marriage to Michael Loomis, she decides to emigrate. They buy a dilapidated former convent in Louviers, France in 1994 and their story really gets underway.

ON RUE TATIN tells about the renovation of the house as well as the story of their adjustment to French culture, the friends and workmen they encounter, and the life they live as modern expatriots. Having established a reputation and published a cookbook, Loomis writes another throughout the development of this memoir and she includes some of her recipes in this volume.

Loomis is a pedestrian writer at best, so the charm of the book rests on the experiences of the author and the usefulness of the recipes. I tried one -- the chocolate cake -- and found it delicious.

Sunnye Tiedemann