Spotted Dick, S'Il Vous Plait: An English Restaurant in France - Hardcover

Higgins, Tom

2.71

7 ratings by Goodreads

9781569470329: Spotted Dick, S'Il Vous Plait: An English Restaurant in France

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569470324 ISBN 13: 9781569470329

Publisher: Soho Pr Inc, 1995

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Tom Higgins, a translator who was spending much of his time in Geneva and his wife, Sue, a doctor, the brave English couple in Spotted Dick, s'il vous plait: An English Restaurant in France, did just that. A foolhardy venture, perhaps, because not only did they possess little experience in the professional food trade, they had the audacity to serve English cuisine to discerning Lyonnais. It is a well known fact the Lyon is not only the gastronomic capital of France (some say the world) boasting many Michelin-starred establishments, but that the French have a notorious disdain for English cooking. Would they be able to overcome the national horror of English pudding?
Tom Higgins' entertaining chronicle of the long, and rather bumpy road to fulfilling their dream is presented in an anecdotal style laced with a good dose of self-deprecating humor. His stories of French bank managers, petit bureaucrats and construction workers are an amusing glimpse into the French daily life. But the difficulties and financial risks of doing business in a foreign country - not to mention the language barrier and the exhausting hours - have been offset by the great compensation of living in Lyon and the beautiful countryside that surround it; planning the meals and shopping the terrific local markets for the freshest ingredients; visiting the nearby vineyards to stock cellar and kitchen; and finally, getting a good reputation and a steadily growing clientele. And, Tom has included a dozen of their favorite recipes, including one for that English pudding-of-all-puddings, Spotted Dick.

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From the Inside Flap:

r would have believed that anything could make me want to go eat English food in Lyon, but Higgins's delightful book has done so."
--Mimi Sheraton
When Tom Higgins, a translator, and his wife, Sue, a physician, decided to set up an English restaurant in Lyon, France (the country's capital of fine dining), they had no idea what they were getting into. In this delightful memoir of their first eight years in business, Higgins recounts all--from the amused disbelief of their neighbors who regard English food as a joke, to the frustrating impenetrability of the French licensing bureaucracy, from the positive delight in choosing wines and creating menus, to, ultimately, the extraordinary feeling of running a good restaurant that pleases the most fussy diners in the world.
Included in this charming tale are twelve typically English recipes
that anyone can make!

"After Peter Mayle comes Tom Higgins in Lyon. . . . Delightful reading."
--BBC Good Food&

From Publishers Weekly:

The idea of a restaurant specializing in English food was a joke to the people of Lyons, gastronomic center of France. Typified by overcooked meats and vegetables, soggy puddings and revolting jellies, English food was not dignified as a cuisine at all by the Lyonnais. But Higgins and his wife, Sue, loved the city and, having always wanted to run a restaurant, ignored all warnings and found a house in a low-rent section of town, where they lived on one floor and ran their restaurant on the other. Higgins, a translator, had done time as a waiter and sometime cook in English restaurants but had never run one himself. Sue's experience as a British physician was, at least, irrelevant. The couple's travails in persuading bankers, bureaucrats, suppliers, workers and, above all, patrons that theirs was a serious business are often hilarious. Their droll reflections on local characters, markets, French eating habits and all the problems of running a restaurant anywhere, but particularly for foreigners in France, faintly echo Ludwig Bemelmans's classic memoirs of his hotel-keeping days. That the Higginses persuaded the French to demand English meat loaf, "spotted dick" (pudding with raisins) and other scorned English dishes is the miracle of their eight-year-old success.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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