French Gourmet Adventure: Taste Of Paris – Richard and Judy Fritz embarked on a culinary adventure in Paris when they followed in the footsteps of a popular restaurant guide written in the 1980s by renowned economist Bela Balassa. think about your eating habits.
I was able to use many sources to guide my choice of restaurants in Paris during a visit this past spring—the Michelin Guide, the New York Times, the press. trust books, returning partners, or this website itself—but as an economist I chose to follow in the footsteps of a fellow economist. Not just a fellow economist, mind you, but a pioneering economist whose rigorous academic work impressed me, a well-liked fellow, well-versed in traditional French cuisine, wine tasting, and demanding trying to keep detailed records on the 250 or so restaurants he had the opportunity to see in Paris over the years while working for the World Bank.
French Gourmet Adventure: Taste Of Paris
I was first introduced to Bela Balassa’s academic research as a graduate student at Georgetown University in 1975. My business career is not international, but we all read Dr. Balassa’s groundbreaking work. Balassa in terms of international trade. Ultimately, his research led the way to important changes in Bank policy.
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In his “Preface or Let the Reader Beware,” Dr. Balassa in the 1985 edition, “This article presents a review of twenty-five restaurants in Paris, carefully selected among the two hundred-50 the author visited between 1959 and mid-1985… Not tried the author chooses, checks and rechecks the restaurants on the list, regardless of his caloric intake (and cholesterol).
“[This] is written,” said Dr. Balassa, “for the benefit of those who want to increase the (culinary) benefit obtained from eating, combined with wine, and under the financial limit.”
“Maximize utility” is a phrase that speaks to me as an economist, but I know that most travelers to Paris are in search of pleasure rather than utility. And rightly so. In fact, the main idea in microeconomics is that consumers try to achieve their maximum satisfaction (economists call it “utility”) by consuming a group of goods, under the financial limit. Of course, Dr. Balassa’s use of economic terms is half tongue in cheek here; He never gives details about how he calculates a good sales ratio. Naturally, he began to increase his own happiness from winning and dining in Paris, based on his own desire (knowledge) and financial commitment (good), then to share in his opinion a good and good meal in Paris with the family. and friends. Dr. Balassa has a notation system for restaurants with 10 being the highest “grade” and 5 being the lowest to be accepted for inclusion on his list. He was strict and organized in his contact with the only establishments he visited twice.
Born in Budapest in 1928, Dr. Balassa came to the United States from Hungary in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution was crushed by Soviet forces. He was appointed an assistant professor of economics at Yale before becoming an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University. He also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which provided him with travel stipends that he used as a basis for his budget in his search for food in Paris, which is the latter. He died in 1991.
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In the spring of 2020, my last semester teaching at Georgia Tech, I found with the help of one of my students the 7th edition of Dr. Balassa’s Primer, published 1985. ”x 11” paper, folded in half and stapled in the center. There are 66 pages of text discussing restaurants and ten pages of a
Using a decade-old restaurant list as a guide has its challenges, but I’m happy to accept the pitfalls in the name of food travel, and I’m rewarded for my efforts by The six delicious recipes I’m giving below are for you to find helpful. in the pursuit of expanding your own culinary interests. I must say that we were rewarded because my partner on this trip, Judy, my wife of fifty-four years, is a doctor in France and knows enough about French cuisine to be an excellent nutritionist.
There are 25 restaurants listed in the 7th edition, but 38 years in the Parisian restaurant industry took its words of Dr. Balassa. In undertaking the journey of following in Dr. Balassa’s culinary footsteps, Judy and I decided that in order to be true to the first choice we would only go to restaurants with the same name and location. like what he said in that 7th book. Six of the first 25 restaurants made the cut. At the end of April 2023, we left Paris after renting an apartment for 28 days and booked those six remaining restaurants.
, Dr. Balassa, who passed away in 1991, described the various dishes he ate with his family. He has put his son and daughter on the menu of various restaurants. So I decided to look for them in preparation for our trip. Through some hard work and a lot of luck, I got in touch with Bela’s widow, Carol, to share the plan of our food tour. She shared our project with her son and daughter. Carol’s son sent me excerpts from the Primer’s 8th and final edition, from 1987, which led us to add two more restaurants to our list, bringing the total number of restaurants existing under the same name at number one to eight.
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Naturally, a World Bank travel fund for an economist of Dr. Balassa’s stature has not been released to steakhouses, crepe houses, kebab stands and Chinese cuisine at all. . It offers him a seat in a range of affordable and quality establishments, including some Michelin-starred restaurants.
In his foreword, Dr. Balassa revealed that his “own limit” when considering the cost of a meal in 1985 was $70 per meal for two people. He wrote, “Unfortunately, employees of international companies will have their travel accounts refunded for ‘exercise’ if they eat two meals a day at these prices. In order to avoid that as a result, they had to limit themselves to a daily meal in one of the restaurants, a spartan breakfast, and a quiche Lorraine for lunch. The average price of one US dollar in 1985 is $2.84 adjusted for 2023 prices. So Dr. Balassa’s limit of $70 for a meal for two converts to $198.80 at today’s prices, or about €184 when I travel to this past spring, which, as you will soon read, allows for some very good foods.
Following Bela Balassa’s culinary footsteps, Judy and I felt a connection with him, and before long we were calling him not Dr. Balassa but Bela. So I’m using his first name for the rest of this article. Although we will give “grades” to these restaurants later, as Bela did, I will list them here in the order in which we visited them. Unlike Bela, we just eat each other. And while we don’t have the breadth and depth of food knowledge to draw on what he did, we think there’s enough knowledge of French food, especially traditional French food, to share our thoughts on the restaurants we visited.
Bela has been called “the best restaurant,” and about four years later we know it’s really good. We thought that Bela’s words were based on the traditional local restaurant. This one fits the bill. You don’t go to Paris for a trade show at the Parc des Expositions (Porte de Versailles), a 5-minute walk from the restaurant. The home stadium of the Paris football club Stade Français is two miles away. Rugby murals adorn the interior of this restaurant that has stood the test of time.
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We have a French guest visiting from the Beaujolais region who is very interested in joining this food tour. We started by sharing a
(duck pâté) with radishes and homemade cornichons. The combination was well balanced with duck fat and salty cornichons. For our main course we ordered
(all dishes come with “pommes frites”). Our guest readily agreed and compared the food to what his grandmother used to prepare when he was young. The white meat on both beef dishes is thick and flavorful. The lamb was well prepared, served with broccoli florets. The frying is hot and the food is almost ready to eat. For dessert, we ordered
. The desert is amazing. We all want another round of pommes frites. All in all, however, Bela steered us in the right direction for eating French comfort food with real flavor… at an affordable price. It’s our lunch