I joined the French Club in middle school mainly for the snacks. I’d heard the teacher sometimes brought cheese or offered a lesson in torching creme brulee. My time with the club ultimately sparked my lifelong obsession with French culture.
Years later, I lived with host families in various parts of France and found that food was often the fastest way to both learn about my new surroundings and bond with people. One afternoon, a widow, who mostly kept to herself, taught me her recipe for stuffed tomatoes. She wrote it all down after we cooked, worried I would forget specific instructions that had been passed through generations of her family.
I felt so honored that she trusted me with her stories and her dinner. “There’s an old saying that to know food is to know everything about a place’s language, geography, culture and history,” chef Patrick O’Connell, owner of the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, tells me. “If you’re thoroughly immersed in food, you will have a window into all of those things.
” With the Olympics coming up and the eyes of the world on France, it only feels right to get into the spirit of Paris with a spread that will leave you feeling connected to the City of Light. To help us all out, I asked chefs and seasoned hosts what they would serve to friends and family for a watch party. Here’s what they had to say.
As a chef, O’Connell knows a little something about translating French food for American audiences. Julia Child, the queen.