Between Bites: Memoirs of a Hungry Hedonist

James Villas is in love with the notion of himself as a bon vivant. The food and wine editor of Town & Country magazine for many years, a cookbook author, and a contributor to Esquire, Villas has chronicled gourmet living through the foodie revolutions of the last three decades. In Between Bites: Memoirs of a Hungry Hedonist, he writes about discovering and developing his palate in France in the early 1960s, the Advent of Julia (Child, of course), the rise of nouvelle cuisine, and the return to regional cooking. Though he claims to be a supporter of down-home American cuisine, Villas is deeply enamored of all things jet set. His idea of glamour has everything to do with champagne and what he always refers to as "sufficiencies of caviar." His memoir unfolds as a series of portraits of great chefs, restaurateurs, and eaters he has known--chapters are devoted to everyone from James Beard and Paula Wolfert to Jeremiah Tower and Paul Bocuse. These friends are portrayed lovingly and wickedly; Villas is a self-described "old queen" who loves nothing more than a good gossip. Sometimes the storymongering can get a bit breathless; he describes at least three times a meal aboard the SS France with Salvador Dali and an ocelot. But even his name-dropping has a certain charm: here's a sophisticate who still gets starry-eyed about his own extraordinary good fortune. --Claire Dederer