Beautiful photographs, well laid out lists of ingredients, not a book for someone just starting out as cooking instructions are pretty terse.

"Good taste is one of those elusive qualities that most people find hard to define, even though they know it when they see it. In general, however, it denotes quality, simplicity, and ease. When applied to food, taste is also present when good ingredients are cooked in an honest way that highlights the essence of their taste, texture, and appearance." -Chuck Williams

Chuck Williams' philosophy is to celebrate the pleasure of cooking. He opened his first store in Sonoma, CA in 1956 and now more than 200 stores have opened in the United States. He has literally helped to revolutionize cooking in America.

My first introduction to a Williams-Sonoma store was when some friends bought me the cutest Les Garcons Dinnerware as a wedding present. French artist Guy Buffet is renowned for his whimsical impressionistic style and creates the porcelain plates, each with a different waiter. They are made exclusively for Williams-Sonoma and are a favorite collectible.

Later, while walking through Bellevue Square in Bellevue, WA I saw the plates there and then fell in love with cooking stores.

The Best of Taste is a 320 page compilation of the favorite recipes from the first year of Williams-Sonoma TASTE Magazine. Many of the world's greatest chefs have made a contribution to this cookbook. Marimar Torres, Joyce Goldstein, Nancy Silverton, Patricia Wells, Deborah Madison, Jean Georges Vongerichten to name a few.

Throughout this cookbook, you will find 250 beautiful, larger-than-life photographs. Fascinating pictures of a bakery in Paris or a honey farm in Manhattan. There are also photographs of the techniques in the recipes to illustrate the food preparation steps.

Each recipe has the most gorgeous picture and a full page with an easy to read ingredient list and numbered instructions.

The contents include (with recipe selections):

Introduction
Drinks - Guava Colada to Tropical Delights

Starters - Spicy Crab Cakes, Endive with Crab, Bacon wrapped dates, Balkan Meat-Stuffed Potato Pastries, the cutest Caviar Purses, Sizzling Shrimp with Garlic.

Soups & Stews - Gorgeous Avocado-Cucumber Soup, Spanish Garlic Soup, Beef and Onion Stew.

Salads - Marinated Zucchini and Goat's Cheese Salad, Apple, Celeriac and Chestnut Salad, Kidney Bean and Chicken Salad.

Entrees - Matambre, Stuffed Lamb with Eggplant and Feta, Veal Involtini with Grilled Anaheim Chiles, Fish Baked in Salt, braised Short Ribs with Bok Choy.

Sides - Green Garlic and Spinach Soufflé, Butternut Squash with Dates and Pistachios, Hot and Spicy Roasted Pears (from the cover), Stir-Fried Eggplant.

Desserts - Buzzy Bees (cookies), Chocolate Chunk Cherry Biscotti (talk about heavenly), Chocolate Rum Truffles, Nun's Breasts with Pumpkin Cream (a pillow of pumpkin pastry cream atop a crunchy cornmeal oatmeal cookie, showered with powdered sugar), Plum and Grape Cobbler, Cherry -Almond Cake, Orange Custard, Pomegranate Sorbet and a divine Chocolate Soufflé.

I feel a little heady just typing all those delicious dessert names.

A definite collectable you will actually want to cook from! Also perfect for coffee table reflection. Just as fun to read as to cook from. Your heart will beat a little faster while you read (or one could say: "devour with your eyes") this cookbook.

Truly an Exciting Cookbook filled with delicious recipes! If this book doesn't get you into the kitchen, nothing will!

easy-to-do menus, I've made about 40% of the menus in the book ... non-complicated and creative recipes, delightful!

This is a neat book. It affirms the choice of having a dog in the city and dispels a lot of the "dogs are happier in the country" mythology.

It also tells you what to do to make your dog a good urban citizen, traits missing from so many of the dogs in our neighborhood -- aggressive, overbarking, impinging on the general peace and quiet. All of which backlash in overbearing city dog ordinances.

This is a good, comprehensive health and positive attitude book for city dog owners.

City Dog: Choosing And Living Well With A Dog In Town by animal expert Patricia Curtis is a very useful and highly recommended guide to selecting a dog which would be best suited to a particular living accommodation and lifestyle. City Dog is to be commended for its wealth of tips, tricks, and techniques for exercising one's pet in a city environment, adopting dogs from shelters, urban pet etiquette, and a great deal more, all presented in a "reader friendly" manual written especially for the non-specialist general reader in search of a suitable canine companion.

First, I should warn you. I am a college student. I live in a cramped apartment with two roommates, and we are poor. BUT, we live in a place with lower rent so that we can afford groceries, and we take turns cooking during the week. Basiclly, we are not too typical college students.

Among a collection of handed down cookbooks, we have Patricia Wells' Trattoria. The kick here, which I think inspired my mother to get it for me, is that it has simple recipes and its Italian food. This should be a win-win situation: I crave spaghetti daily. But this cookbook is dissapointing.

Among the recipes that do not acquire Lamb, Saffron, Mussels, Pancetta, Crab, Swordfish, Rabbit, or Oxtail, are a few that sound absolutely ridicuously easy. Examples; "Pan Fried Potatoes with Olives," (Potatoes, Olive Oil, Olives, Salt & Pepper) or "Tajarin with Rosemary-Infused Butter." (Unsalted Butter, Rosemary, Salt, Tagliatelle, Parmagiana-Romana Cheese)
After following the sometimes meticulous, but still easy steps, we found ourselves chewing and thinking "Is that it?"

Of course our friend in culinary school would point out that we are not using the freshest of ingredients, but we got what we could. Even he thought what we had was uneventful.

Why three stars? Last night we had some very good chicken, and, again, the recipes are easy to make. Overall the results from this book were good enough to eat, but nothing special enough to write a cookbook about.

I bought this cookbook on a whim and have never looked back! Shortly after perusing this book I thought "hmmm. Italian anti-pasti party!" I gave that party five times, and almost every dish I made for the parties was from this book. I have not made one single thing that wasn't delicious. Try the caponata, or Aunt Flora's olive salad, or the chicken with red peppers, or the mushroom orange risotto, or the fragrant orange lemon bundt cake, or the ricotta cheesecake....okay, I'm getting carried away, but from someone who cooks a lot, has taken many, many cooking classes and practically collects cookbooks, this book is incredible!

Since I returned from a trip to Italy a year ago, I have sought high and low for a cookbook that would put Italy into my hands as it was when I was there. This is that book! I've had it two weeks and used it six times already.

I learned in Italy that there is Italian food, and then there is American Italian food (think "Olive Garden" chain restaurant). A true Italian "trattoria" is small, intimate, and completely reliant on the ingredients of freshness and simplicity. Dried pasta isn't forbidden, and fresh pasta isn't unheard of.

Many of these recipes have only a half dozen ingredients. The techniques are simple, and you need have only a medium level of confidence to turn out the most savory and aromatic food of your life. The recipes run the entire course: appetizers to dessert. Additionally, there are sources for hard-to-find ingredients and equipment.

Some sample dishes: Lemon Risotto, Goat Cheese and Carlic Spread, White Bean Salad with Fresh Sage and Thyme; Tuscan Five-Bean Soup; Roasted Yellow Pepper Soup; Roasted Rosemary Potatoes; Individual Eggplant Parmesans; Penne with Vodka and Spicy Tomato-Cream Sauce; Saffron Butterflies; Tagliarini with Lemon Sauce; Risotto with Tomatoes and Parmesan; Orange, Sage and Mushroom Risotto; several bread recipes; Fried Calamari; Sautéed Chicken Breasts with Sage; Chicken Cooked Under Bricks...oh, enough. Are you salivating yet?

Mille grazie, Patricia! And a big bacia to you for this wonderful, loving tribute to Italy.

If I can't be in Italy, I can pretend.

Lancelotpad 8 3813EW Amersfoort Holland

Very interesting to analyse the signature recipes of the master, but the bulk of the book contains recipes of Robuchon proteges -- of the 48 recipes in total, only 8 are by Robuchon, which was rather disappointing.

Yes it is true, one of the best chefs in the world writes a great book that covers the styles of modern and traditional French cooking. YOU should definetely buy this book, it is a classic.

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.

This book is essential for anyone interested in French cuisine. I have eagerly read all four editions--as well as all of Ms. Wells' other books. French and American friends who live in Paris have agreeds that there is no better survey of Paris's top gastronomic attractions than this book.

I am by nature a nit-picker but have yet to find an inaccuracy in any of her books. Well worth while!

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.

I located this book at a branch of the Nashville Public Library a few years ago while doing research for a wood carving of Ida B. Wells. Of course the text is meant for a juvenile audience, but it was a very good source of pictures of Ida B.Wells and by that time more pictures were the main thing I needed.It gives a good if brief review of her life.

Hardy has essentially written the same story twice here, with a few significant variations in the second version. This makes for a rather peculiar experience, as the reader will encounter identical passages in both versions. Nevertheless, I am haunted by this work and the insights it supplied. It explores the life of a man tormented by desire for an ideal love. Much to his chagrin, the ideal (referred to as the well-beloved) inhabits the bodies of a series of women, and never for long. He lives his life in anguished pursuit. What is truly upsetting is his total reliance on physical attributes, which becomes a source of humiliation as his life progresses. Hardy helped me understand how men approach women in a way no other writer has had the courage to explain. Once again, I am overwhelmed by his brutal honesty and unrelenting power. He will force you to open your eyes.

No question in my mind why this book is no longer in print! One of the repeated themes in this book is to not shop with your children because they will just whine and beg you to buy all of the snack foods they see on TV. The author then goes on to say that for an entire summer they utilized only kerosene light as they watched TV to save money on their electric bill. DUH! TURN OFF THE TV! There is also a fascinating segment toward the back of the book on how to prepare "shrubs" which can replace the cost of alcohol in your budget. ??? I was waiting for her to tell me how to build the still! Full of sarcastic humor...brownie recipes that contain 3 cups of flour and 5 cups of sugar....save the money you would have spent on this book and apply it to your grocery bill!

Although most of these ideas in this book are pretty good, I draw the line at purchasing $.49 per pound hotdogs at Aldis to save on "meat" costs, or feeding my dog and cat the cheapest pet food available, to save money (it won't save money on vet bills). She even suggests you just get a smaller pet to save money! Not an option. But overall she does give some good ideas on buying in bulk, comparison shopping, stretching foods, etc. Probably a good buy for someone starting out, but I would round it out with other books such as Tightwad Gazette or some basic cookbooks.

Learn how, where, and when to shop, smart ways to eat out, and how to use food you might have otherwise thrown out. Money saving tips include cheap cleaning solutions, and advice on growing your own harvest. Ideal for young people just starting out.

I've been buying this calendar now for about 4 years. The first time I bought it the pictures were new to me, of course. And the layout looked very French. But now, it seems it's the same old photos with a more modern layout. Don't get me wrong, the photos are pretty, some cliche. And the months and days are where they should be. But maybe it needs to get a little more gritty and less pretty?

For two years running, this calendar has served me well. One month spans two oversized pages and focuses on a particular region in France. Wells' text is brief but charming. The cover accurately illustrates the typical assortment of Rothfeld's photographs -- in size, number, and breadth of topic -- that adorn each and every month. Still, generous room is allotted each day for noting appointments, recitals, and what have you. Holidays span US, UK, Canada, Australia along with major Christian and Hebrew holy days. One star off for the lack of moon phases.

I have the 2002 edition of this calendar. The first calendar that I purchased was missing the month of May and had an additional month of April inserted in between the months of June and July. Other months were also inserted upside-down. Consequently, I returned this calendar to the store and was given another. I do not like the calendar. It frequently gives the wrong day of the week with the date (ex. it said today was Monday when it is actually Friday!). It also continuely reuses the same pictures. They are simply varied slightly -- ie, distance from subject varies, same shot at different time of day, same picture with slightly different shadows; I sure you get the idea. If the 2002 edition is any indication, I would not buy this calendar as it is of extremely POOR quality!

For three years running, this calendar has served me well. One month spans two oversized pages and focuses on a particular region in France. Wells' text is brief but charming. The cover accurately illustrates the typical assortment of Rothfeld's photographs - in size, number, and breadth of topic - that adorn each and every month. Still, Workman's calendars allot generous room each day for noting appointments, recitals, and what have you. Holidays span US, UK, Canada, Australia along with major Christian and Hebrew holy days. One star off for the lack of moon phases, still missing in the sample pages.

Beautiful photography. Each one a stand alone beauty. Adequate space for reminders. The creators of this calendar show their love for France on each beautiful page.