The six-pound, illustrated guide to French cuisine by François-Régis Gaudry

This week we’re excited to welcome François-Régis Gaudry to SALT + SPINE, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks. François-Régis is a food critic, radio host, and author of Let’s Eat France!

Is Let’s Eat France a cookbook? Well yes, but with 1,250 specialty foods, 375 iconic recipes, 350 topics, and 260 personalities packed within its 432 pages…it’s not your standard collection of recipes.

Plus, it weighs six pounds (2.7 kilos).

Creating Let’s Eat France! was no small feat. François-Régis had the help of a small army of friends, experts, food artisans, academics, cooks, confectioners, and sommeliers to write what is a fun, informative, and appetizing read.

“La cuisine ç’est beaucoup plus que des recettes. It means – Cuisine: it’s much more than recipes. It’s culture.” — FRENCH CHEF ALAIN CHAPEL'S COOKBOOK

We sat down with François-Régis at San Francisco's The Civic Kitchen cooking school to talk about whether french fries are French (maybe), the thousands of cookbooks in his personal collection, and how French culture is synonymous with its food.

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ALSO: Paula Forbes' recommendations of other books that break the typical cookbook mold:

• The DIY Cook by Tim Hayward

• Au Pied de Cochon: The Album and Sugar Shack Au Pied de Cochon by Martin Picard

• The Adventures of Fat Rice by Abraham Conlon, Adrienne Lo, Hugh Amano

• Chasing the Gator: Isaac Toups and the New Cajun Cooking by Isaac Toups