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An incomparable culinary treasury: the definitive guide to French cooking for the way we live now, from the man the Gault Millau guide has proclaimed “Chef of the Century.”

Joël Robuchon’s restaurant empire stretches from Paris to New York, Las Vegas to Tokyo, London to Hong Kong. He holds more Michelin stars than any other chef. Now this great master gives us his supremely authoritative renditions of virtually the entire French culinary repertoire, adapted for the home cook and the contemporary palate.

Here are more than 800 precise, easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes, including Robuchon’s updated versions of great classics—Pot-au-Feu, Sole Meunière, Cherry Custard Tart—as well as dozens of less well-known but equally scrumptious salads, roasts, gratins, and stews. Here, too, are a surprising variety of regional specialties (star turns like Aristide Couteaux’s variation on Hare Royale) and such essential favorites as scrambled eggs. Emphasizing quality ingredients and the brilliant but simple marriage of candid flavors—the genius for which he is rightly celebrated—Robuchon encourages the beginner with jargon-free, impeccable instructions in technique, while offering the practiced cook exciting paths for experimentation.

The Complete Robuchon is a book to be consulted again and again, a magnificent resource no kitchen should be without.

Average Customer Rating:

Nothing New	Customer Rating:
Sometimes I'm able to get new titles from the library prior to purchasing the books. In this case I'm so glad I did. There is nothing extraordinary that has not been done in many other cookbooks. There are no photos. Actually, I just browsed through it and returned it immediately.

Not all bad

Customer Rating:

I bought this book anticipating, like most other reviewers, a big colorful coffee table cookbook brimming with amazing photographs. It's none of that. It's a straight-forward cookbook packed with recipes for just about everything you can imagine. I was disappointed at first. But after I took some time to page through it, I was quite pleased with it. For the price, it is quite a bargain. It's over 800 pages of great recipes. Granted some of them are very simple, foundation recipes, but for an amateur cook, this book is perfect. Even for us more experienced cooks, it contains a wealth of information, techniques, and ideas.

Unexpected, But Pleasing

Customer Rating:

In a holiday season stuffed with extremely glossy, gorgeous books on cooking - more fetish objects or coffee table books than cookbooks - The Complete Robuchon is an outlier. I pre-ordered my book months in advance, expecting a lavish, opulent package of arty photos, personal anecdotes, and the other trimmings of a major, cellophane-sealed Chef's opus. Instead, what arrived at my door was a sturdy and stout cookbook, with colorless pages (and prose, for that matter) and not a single photo. At first, I was disappointed. But then, when faced with such a massive cookbook, I sat down and began reading it, front to back. Robuchon, for a chef who we all may associate with innovation and opulence, tasked himself in this book with creating something for the home chef, and for the chef beginning their journey into the complicated world of French cuisine. So what he focuses on, above all else, in this book is technique. You leave a section on vegetables not even questioning why you would take the time to blanch. It's that authoritative, clear, and informative. This isn't a coffee table book, and it isn't a book for a well-read French chef. It's a solid work, though, and an inspiring compendium of culinary knowledge - perhaps a little more basic than some might wish, but full of wisdom for everyone from beginners to... well, maybe intermediates.

Extremely Disappointed

Customer Rating:

I was looking forward to this book for awhile as I pre-ordered it. When I was in culinary school I actually did a report on Chef Robuchon and I have eaten at his restaurant in The Four Seasons Hotel, so I was excited to get recipes from his brilliant self. The book had horrible paper, no pictures, and the recipes are so basic and made for a beginner home cook. I would be better off buying the Joy of Cooking. I do not need a recipe for most of the recipes in the book. This is NOT the work of an outstanding chef...and not a book for other chefs. This is a book for the type of person who would watch "How to Boil Water" on the Food Network. Rachel Ray might as well have wrote it.

Disapointed	Customer Rating:
Well, I was very disapointed to find no pictures in the book. The paper quality is not that great either. I pre-order the book back in August thinking that since it was written by Chef Joel's, it was going to be a great book but I was wrong. This may be an "ok" book for beginers or home cooks but not for the professional chef.