Col Bio - PROVENCE, 1970: MFK Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard & the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr

     The American Heartland in the 1950's & 60's.  Middle class families are sitting down to tuna casseroles, meatloaf, corn, TV dinners, Sunday-after-church local diner food.  No Mexican restaurants north of Texas. Italian food? Chef Boyardee spaghetti & meatballs.  No Indian, Asian, French cuisine outside of any metropolitan area. French onion soup? Tacos? Calamari? Caesar Salad? Basalmic vinegar? Unheard of.
     Into this culinary abyss step the giants of American cooking. By kismet, several famous foodies - chefs and food writers/critics - converge in Provence in the fall and winter of 1970. Times they are a'changin'. French cuisine is no longer the epitome of food nirvana. The counterculture has spawned an organic revolution. The age of "Mad Men" is in full swing (think "fondue"), and good food is becoming more accessible, indeed indispensable to the upwardly mobile.
     Taken from lost diaries, this is a rare insight into how these influential people grappled with their own ideas of what food should be, and ended up changing American eating habits.  With their prickly personalities, they cooked, shopped, discussed, argued, drank, made friends, and made enemies. But in the end, they all left France that winter of 1970 changed, with a sense that something important was happening in the culinary world to which they would contribute mightily, each in his own way.