Let Them Eat Pancakes:
One Man’s Personal Revolution in the City of Light
(July 7, 2020)
By Craig Carlson, the New York Times
bestselling author of Pancakes in Paris
Craig has quite a lot to say about how France handled things during the world pandemic and how their rules both for businesses and day-to-day life differ from ours in America. We think your readers and viewers will be fascinated to hear about 2020 through the eyes of a CT born author and screenwriter.
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In this second helping from Craig, he dishes out wonderfully charming tales on the joys and challenges of working, eating, and loving in France, all seen through the lens of Breakfast in America, the first and only American-style diner in Paris, which he founded and runs.
But ever since his diner’s inception, he’s always faced down obstacles, whether it’s finding cooks who can navigate the impossibly petite kitchen (and create delicious roast Turkey for the Thanksgiving Special to boot), finding “exotic” ingredients like bacon and bagels, Kafkaesque French bureaucracy, or Draconian labor laws that forbid you from firing employees—even for outright theft!
But it’s more than just convincing self-proclaimed anarchists that yes, they do in fact need to pay their bills. Craig delights in hunting for snails with his French mother-in-law and relishes treating his elegant nonagrian neighbor to her first-ever cheeseburger.
When Craig finds love, he and his debonair French cheri find themselves battling the most unlikely of foes—the notorious Pigeon Man—for sanity never mind peace and romance, in their little corner of Paris. An avian-induced quarantine from a simpler time!
Let Them Eat Pancakes
One Man's Personal Revolution in the City of Light
Craig Carlson
A second helping of tales on the joys and challenges of working, eating, and loving in France from the New York Times bestselling author of Pancakes in Paris.
Craig Carlson set out to do the impossible: open the first American diner in Paris. Despite never having owned his own business before—let alone a restaurant, the riskiest business of all—Craig chose to open his diner in a foreign country, with a foreign language that also happens to be the culinary capital of the world. While facing enormous obstacles, whether its finding cooks who can navigate the impossibly petite kitchen (and create delicious roast Turkey for their Thanksgiving Special to boot), finding “exotic” ingredients like bacon, breakfast sausage, and bagels, and dealing with constant strikes, demonstrations, and Kafkaesque French bureaucracy, Craig and his diner, Breakfast in America, went on to be a great success—especially with the French.
By turns hilarious and provocative, Craig takes us hunting for snails with his French mother-in-law and invites us to share the table when he treats his elegant nonagrian neighbor to her first-ever cheeseburger. We encounter a customer at his diner who, as a self-proclaimed anarchist, tries to stiff his bill, saying it’s his right to “dine and dash.” We navigate Draconian labor laws where bad employees can’t be fired (even for theft) and battle antiquated French bureaucracy dating back to Napoleon.
When Craig finds love, he and his debonair French cheri find themselves battling the most unlikely of foes—the notorious Pigeon Man—for their sanity, never mind peace and romance, in their little corner of Paris. For all those who love stories of adventure, delicious food, and over-coming the odds, Let Them Eat Pancakes will satisfy your appetite and leave you wanting even more.
Craig Carlson is the New York Times bestselling author of Pancakes in Paris and the owner and founder of Breakfast in America, the first American-style diner in Paris, which has been featured in The Lonely Planet and Frommer’s Paris travel guides. He lives in Paris with his partner.
