ALL ABOUT FOOD: Reading as delicious as eating

With the dollar at a longtime low, European travel may not fit into your budget this year unless you’ve won a bundle on “Deal Or No Deal” or are engaged to one of the family members of the Sultan of Brunei. Perhaps you’ve decided on a driving vacation around the U.S. but actually, with the price of gas, it might be cheaper to fly to Paris.

Either way, Laguna Beach Books has a fun selection of authors who have written entertaining, informative chronicles about their adventures and experiences with eating around the world. Even if you are staying at home and barbecuing this summer, you can still be an armchair traveler and drool your way through these delicious books.

Because Paris is still considered the gastronomic capital of the world, there are probably more dining guides and food memoirs about this city than any other. Now that Michelin has been exposed as less than reliable, there is room for some new talent.

Clotildes Dusoulier is one of the nouvelle vague of French foodies, a native Parisian with a popular blog (chocolateandzucchini.com), she has written a book called “Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris.” What distinguishes this from other Paris guides is that she includes markets, shops, department stores and museums that serve food. Also, she mentions tea shops that are great places for lunch, offering real French omelettes (which are surprisingly hard to come by), quiches, salads and fabulous pastries. She’s not snobbish in that she includes neo-bistros, ethnic and vegetarian restaurants as well as places that are new. Furthermore, she emphasizes affordable, delectable food.

For Alexander Lobrano, Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent, reputation means nothing and neither does atmosphere. It’s all about what’s on the plate! In his new guide “Hungry for Paris,” he shares his personal selection of the city’s 102 best restaurants including the most delicious dishes, the ambience, the clientele and a bit of its history. His irreverent, lively descriptions and essays are informative and a pleasure to read. The hottest young chefs, secret places Parisians love, and best buys are a few of his topics. He also discusses the best seasonal eating and, in a chapter called “Eating the Unspeakable,” he tries to encourage you to eat what you think you don’t like. Great maps and beautiful photographs make this book a must. Reading it is almost as much fun as dining in Paris.

On a slightly different note, Bob Spitz, in order to distract himself from the experience of his recent divorce, escapes to Europe and hits the cooking school circuit. He has written a travelogue with gastronomic lore, with tales of mad chefs, lots of local color and cooking lessons with recipes. He chronicles his transformation from a kitchen amateur into a world-class cook in “The Saucier’s Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip Through the Cooking Schools Of Europe.”

“A Late Dinner” by British journalist Paul Richardson, who has lived in Spain for 15 years (where they eat dinner later than anywhere else in the world) is a vivid and richly textured book that goes beyond paella and gazpacho. It traces the roots of Spanish food from the ancient shepherd cooking of the mountains to the cuisine-crazy cities of Barcelona, Madrid and San Sebastian. It brings to life the people who grow, cook and eat this varied and lesser-known cuisine. He describes the progression from the garlic-heavy traditional food to the extraordinarily innovative cuisine of Ferran Adria at El Bulli in northern Spain, which ranks among the most unique in the world. He is the man who invented molecular gastronomy.

Going to the Olympics, anyone? A little anxious about where and what you might eat? Here’s the book for you. “Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China” by English food writer Fuschia Dunlop. It is a travel journal that describes the techniques, aesthetics and philosophy of Chinese cooking in an amusing autobiographical tale about a young English graduate student in Chengdu, who attended cooking school on the side and, in a culinary sense, “went native.” She vowed to eat everything she was offered no matter how alien or bizarre, including sea cucumber, civet cat, scorpion, rabbit heads and the pièce de résistance — the ovarian fat of the snow frog. She covers the major differences between the Western and Chinese idea of “good eats,” focusing on freshness, texture/mouth-feel and the idea of what is edible. The book also describes the rapid pace of change in China in the last 10 years and also includes recipes.

Closer to home and maybe less exotic but still wonderful, is Tom Snyder’s “Two-Lane Gourmet,” a back roads tour of West Coast wine regions. Covering almost 2,000 miles of breathtaking countryside from Temecula to Walla-Walla, Snyder travels the roads less taken and finds little known pockets of viticulture heaven, describing artisan wineries, wonderful restaurants and charming inns, B&Bs; and the people who make it all happen. The book includes a wine tasting primer, pronunciation guide and suggested wine pairings.

No matter where you travel in the USA, Jane and Michael Stern have been there. If you’ve never encountered their remarkable, often hilarious guidebooks or enjoyed listening to them on PBS, you have a real treat in store. Their latest endeavor is “Two For the Road: Our Love Affair with American Food.” The Sterns travel the country in search of the best “real food.”

They love small towns and back roads where they find inexpensive and very casual eateries.

This means chicken-fried steak, cherry pie a la mode, biscuits ’n’ gravy, sweet potato pie, pigs’ feet and Indian fry bread, just to mention a very few. It may not be healthy, but boy is it good! They have driven more than 3 million miles and eaten 100 meals in 10 days or fewer.

Even if you aren’t going anywhere this summer, reading these books can be a virtual reality vacation.

ELLE HARROW and TERRY MARKOWITZ owned A La Carte for 20 years. They can be reached for comments or questions at [email protected]