  cover art  The Perfect Meal: In Search of the Lost Tastes of
France  John Baxter  (HarperPerennial; US: Feb 2013)  John
Baxter, an Australian living in France, wrote The Perfect Meal
in response to what he sees as a decline in authentic French
food. To read his unhappy description, French restaurants and
cafés are serving customers foods bought prepackaged, requiring
only a warm-up in the microwave, while the bouillon cube has
replaced genuine broth. Determined to get to the bottom of this
terrifying trend, he undertook planning a classic repas, or fine
French in meal in the old style, the food of not of grandmére
but of the haute cuisine, wherein a battalion of cooks, ranging
from the plongeur, or dishwasher, to the saucier, prepared
elaborately complex meals with meticulous care.  A concern like
Baxter’s could exist nowhere but in France. That isn’t to say
there isn’t genuine concern about the decline of artisanal,
local foods—see the Slow Food movement, with their Ark of
Taste—but to undertake an invente