Rating: 
Summary: Not for the feint of heart
Review: I've been picking up all the alsatian cookbooks I can find, and so this one seemed promising. However, something about it just didn't pay off for me. The cookbook is broken down by seasons, which is always a plus, but none of the recipes seemed appealing to me. The ingredients tend to be things not normally found in the local markets (ex. "Wine braised beef cheeks with chanterelle goulash."), and are frankly quite intimidating to me (let alone, the picky (yet adorable!) person I cook for). The recipes are also very, very complex.
Rating: 
Summary: a work of art and artistry
Review: A beautifully presented work -- the artistry in the food creations is matched by the artful photographic presentation. A friend who is serious about food and cooking reports, after having had a most successful experience with trying a first recipe from the book at home, that this can serve not just as a cookbook but as a guide to life and how it should be lived. It is tasteful and gracious in every way. We need more like this to bring more light, whether from east of paris or elsewhere, into our kitchens and our lives.
Rating:
Summary: Great chef, lousy book
Review: David Bouley is one of America's great chefs. He could be our greatest culinary creator. Bouley's first cookbook is only a peephole into his talent and creation.
In trying several of the recipes offered by his book, I was initially optimistic. The concepts are interesting, the preparations are layered with different nuances of flavor, and the pictures are lovely. The first hesitation I had, was when i noticed that the recipe for Mushroom Goulasch corresponded only abstractly with the photo of the dish. In the recipe, the dumplings are not dumplings, but more of a spaetzle. the spaetzle is not yellow with pieces of chive, but totally green. Finally the beautiful buttery foam in the photo is in actuality a heavy green sauce. So much for truth in advertising.
the potato salad we made was first class.
the tuna dish we made was fine in most respects yet sorely lacking in detail as to the slicing of the tuna (which is critical in the cooking process).
the dishes were very involved, yet the final result was mediocre at best. What a waste of time!
I have eaten in Bouley's restaurant (Bouley's} and followed his career from a distance for some time. He has undoubtedly squandered a great talent in some ways. Yet, I would love for him to publish i true compendium of his creations. Bouley is so talented. I feel very disappointed as i can only assume that the bulk of his oeuvre will be forever out of my reach and understanding.
Rating: 
Summary: Austrian food and wine pairing
Review: I bought this book and a book about Austrian wine. I found the recipes to be a bit complicated, but quite wonderful. I also found some Austrian wine from an online shop (www.winemonger.com) to go with the food!
Rating:
Summary: Cooking like my grandma did
Review: I don't thought I would like this book so much. But when I get it, I sat down and for 2 hours I was reading the book. As a German, this recipes sound often so familiar. My grandma kam from Prague, so her cooking was similar. For me, the recipes are easy to follow but you need your time. I am sure in the next time I will cook a lot from this book. The last year's I was in Italian-cooking, then California-cooking, now it is a change with this book. My husband will love it.
Rating:
Summary: If An Empire Continued Into The Future:
Review: I'm inspired to write from recent praise about 'East of Paris' in Saveur Magazine. David Bouley in his first book, creates a kitchen imbued with Western sensibility and instrumentation- food that is earthy yet avant-garde, evoking old Austria yet consciously contemporary. Included with the recipes are warm toned colorful photographs that convey a culture filled with "clean food" -the integrity of the ingredients prepared the way Klimt might have secured precious gems into a mosaic of ivory marble, lapis and amethyst, gold glows - hues of thunder. Brought together are two chefs who throughout the book take night watches by our side, guiding us through seasonal recipes with 'Notes From the Kitchen': on how to achieve a desirable puff that makes a schnitzel so alluring. Or personal observations on how experimentation lead them to flavors dense and sturdy but still sweet and delicate. Each recipe is not your everyday tale, but of those individuals crossing into new territory. To take the tradition of a potentially weighty cuisine, make it light, while maintaining it's orgins integrity, takes years of research and trials. Like sailing, anyone who ventures forth on the water, from a kayaker to the cruise ship worshiper, understands the freedom of what being on the water brings, will be unable to put this book down. The recipes are easy to follow and foster an independence just in trying them for the first time. You needn't be a cook to enjoy this book, not by any means.
The book is about the love of life, and the challenge of living it to the fullest. Of course it's about taste and tradition, but even more so, it's about breaking the mold, courage, conditioning, determination, achievement, and ones personal quest for realizing that with the right guidance great feasts can be achieved and shared.
Rating:
Summary: If An Empire Continued Into The Future:
Review: I?m inspired to write from recent praise about ?East of Paris? in Saveur Magazine. David Bouley in his first book, creates a kitchen imbued with Western sensibility and instrumentation- food that is earthy yet avant-garde, evoking old Austria yet consciously contemporary. Included with the recipes are warm toned colorful photographs that convey a culture filled with "clean food" ?the integrity of the ingredients prepared the way Klimt might have secured precious gems into a mosaic of ivory marble, lapis and amethyst, gold glows - hues of thunder. Brought together are two chefs who throughout the book take night watches by our side, guiding us through seasonal recipes with ?Notes From the Kitchen?: on how to achieve a desirable puff that makes a schnitzel so alluring. Or personal observations on how experimentation lead them to flavors dense and sturdy but still sweet and delicate. Each recipe is not your everyday tale, but of those individuals crossing into new territory. To take the tradition of a potentially weighty cuisine, make it light, while maintaining it's orgins integrity, takes years of research and trials. Like sailing, anyone who ventures forth on the water, from a kayaker to the cruise ship worshiper, understands the freedom of what being on the water brings, will be unable to put this book down. The recipes are easy to follow and foster an independence just in trying them for the first time. You needn't be a cook to enjoy this book, not by any means.
The book is about the love of life, and the challenge of living it to the fullest. Of course it's about taste and tradition, but even more so, it's about breaking the mold, courage, conditioning, determination, achievement, and ones personal quest for realizing that with the right guidance great feasts can be achieved and shared.
Rating:
Summary: Strudel and Goulash and Schnitzel Oh My
Review: If your heart is in Mitteleuropa so you get dewy eyed for Mozart's music and smile when Wolfgang Puck says 'vegetables' with an extra syllable and yearn for the taste of strudel then read no further and buy a copy of this book. This is a long cold drink of water for all of us foodies who spend their time in cookbooks wading through French and Italian terms for the tenth recipe for coq au vin and the seventeenth recipe for gnocchi. For the more discerning cookbook buyers among you, this is a celebrity chef coffee table style book of recipes from David Bouley's restaurant 'Danube' which specializes in recipes from Vienna or in the style of Vienna, primarily those which would have been served to the Hapsburgs rather than simpler fare found in a Prater district café. This is Austrian haute cuisine, oddly showing much more influence from northern Italy than from Paris (hence the title of the book). This makes eminent sense as much of northern Italy was once under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Recipes are divided among seven (7) chapters primarily presenting cuisine by season. Chapters are: Fall: 14 recipes featuring cabbage, plums, truffles, and suckling pig.
Winter: 16 recipes freaturing venison, strudel, goulash, and viener schnitzel
Spring: 13 recipes featuring salads, rabbit, lobster, and crab
Summer: 12 recipes featuring veal shank, lamb chops, mackeral, salmon, and foie gras
Signature Dishes: 8 cocktail recipes plus 14 entrees, including 7 seafood entrees
Traditional sweets: 15 recipes including the world famous Sachertorte and Linzertorte. Yum
Pantry: 13 recipes for stocks, doughs, and cures Most recipes are relatively long but very well written (Melissa Clark, one of the co-authors, is a professional writer who has written or collaborated on 16 books, including at least one on desserts). Aside from the usual ocurrences of foie gras, black truffles, and caviar one would expect from a cuisine prepared for emperors, there are few unusual ingredients. One of the least familiar is a soft ricotta like cheese named Quark (Topfen in German) which is a soft, fresh, white curd cheese similar to pot cheese. I have never seen it in my local megamart, but then I never looked for it. For the cuisine of Vienna, there are a surprisingly large number of seafood recipes, although I suspect that by the middle of the 19th century, Vienna was within 12 to 16 hours of the Adriatic coast by train. The layout of the book and the photography are as good or better than similar books with equal or higher list prices. The photographs of frolicking sous chefs are kept to a minimum and the photographs really succeed in making the food, especially the pasteries, look appetizing. If you have no cookbook which include the flagship Viennese tortes and strudels, this alone is worth the price of admission. The recipe for Sachertorte, for example, is similar to the recipe in the recent book 'Kaffeehaus' by Rick Rodgers, but seems to achieve a much fancier result with two layers instead of one and with more chocolate, but less sugar. I would trade a Daniel Boulud and two Jacques Pepin softcovers for this one. This may not be for everyone, and the authors are honest about not doing historically accurate cuisine ('New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube') but if part of your heart belongs to Austria, you will enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: How Do You Say "Beware!" in German?
Review: This book has nothing to do with the "New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube." It has everything to do with the cuisine of Danube, Bouley's Manhattan restaurant. It also has nothing to do with food that "real people" can cook, and Gott in Himmel, am I getting sick of these self-serving chef cookbooks. There are countless conceits in this book, but here's just one example. The book is divided, as chefs insist, into seasons. Braised Veal with Porcini is listed as a summer dish...just the kind of thing that all of us would serve on a hot summer's night, right? And last time I checked, fresh porcini (the recipe does not use dried porcini), are in season in October at the earliest. If you are addicted to chef's books that you will only read as vicarious entertainment, you might want to plunk down the money. If you are looking for recipes to truly inspire, and maybe even make, skip it. For a book that really shows the cooking of the Danube region, search for Lilian Langleth-Christensen's Old Vienna Cookbook, published by Gourmet Magazine in the late 50s.
Rating:
Summary: food as gift rather than product
Review: This book is about food as gift, passion, art. You can't sling these recipes together from what you've got in the back of the refrigerator. They require thought, purpose, planning and love. If you love cooking, this book provides nothing less than the opportunity to indulge in a master class in your own home. If you don't cook but just love good food, this book is a window into the exquisite nuance and detail that go into truly great meals. Bouley isn't a celebrity chef because he rides a motorcycle as some of the reviews imply; he's celebrated as one of the great chefs of the world because he brings such creative juxtapositions and complexity of flavor to every dish. Perhaps it's a cultural thing--we live in an era when time is of the essence, anything but the microwave takes too long. As recently as twenty or thirty years ago, everyone's mother and grandmother spent three days just to make a simple spaghetti sauce. A lot of us have forgotten what a difference that makes in terms of pure taste. You simply can't get certain flavors by whipping up something between the time you get home from work and the time your guests show up at the door two hours later. As a working mother of limited culinary talent, I don't think the recipes in this book are really so much hard as they are time-consuming. But that's not a reason to feel frustrated or deprive yourself of what this book offers--take this book as an opportunity to think about our lifestyle, our alienation from food production in this society, and as impetus to consider the virtues of the kind of "slow food" movement sweeping Europe and what kind of more nurturing life-style changes that might imply if we were to allow ourselves that here in the U.S.
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