La Bonne Table: A Book by the Author of the Madeline Series

***SPOILER ALERT***

La Bonne Table by Ludwig Bemelmans takes you on a culinary journey through the heart of Paris to the heights of New York City — yet another kitchen and cuisine-related book I’ve read on a recommendation by Anthony Bourdain.

Ludwig Bemelmans is famous for writing the classic Madeline Series — Madeline’s adventurings, the 7-year-old girl who lives in a French boarding school alongside eleven girls and Miss Clavel.

Turning the pages, I was not disappointed — forming a new satisfaction and developed taste for the honor of food.

Seeing the World Through a Second Set of Eyes

It’s always a fascinating feat to see the world through another set of eyes, and La Bonne Table takes you through the inner-workings of dining in some of the culinary epicenters of the world; this set of eyes being Bemelmans.

You see incredible hotels like “Hotel Splendide” — and restaurants Tour d’Argent and Le Pavillon in Paris and New York City, respectively.

Autobiographical in content, La Bonne Table makes you feel like you’re serving alongside and part of the restaurant team with Ludwig Bemelmans. You serve together, fail together, and succeed together — all while paying homage to the God that is dining.

La Bonne Table Serves Entree After Entree

The words alone were enough to feast on — so the generous helpings of scattered illustrations brought life to the gastronomical timeline within the book’s pages.

Every restaurant and hotel is filled with a beehive of support staff, all ebbing and flowing to reach the customer’s palate and senses ultimately.

As someone who watched Madeline on TV in moving-picture form, to Madeline in picture books — it was fun to see Ludwig Bemelmans’ work in a more mature light, but with the same flowery, beautiful language. Madeline scurried around the streets of Paris, and it seems Bemelmans experienced much the same.

A glowing imagination, delight and charm for food dances through the words popping off from La Bonne Table.

Thanks go out to Anthony Bourdain for yet another fantastic food-book recommendation.