LA BONNE TABLE

Although everything served up here has something to do with eating, this is not a cookbook and it consists of assorted autobiographical pieces about restaurateurs, head waiters or chefs or piccolos or maitres d'hotel, about hotels or innkeeping in general or guests in particular. For Bemelmans, the art of dining well was a passionate preoccupation and these fastidious cruditos are drawn from his books and from articles in magazines. There is no need for cohesion although, in the main, the book follows the chronology of Bemelmans' life and there are many tall tales as well as small anecdotes about places and people which are entertaining to read and reread. The sketches are taken from the backs menus, from unpublished drawings, and the material selected provides the kind of moveable feast he would have wanted an autobiography to be. Michelin would give it three stars and five forks.