When UW grad Susan Hermann Loomis and her husband Michael, a sculptor, lived in Seattle a quarter century ago, in an artists' co-op on 19th Avenue East, she had recently spent a couple of years as an intern for Patricia Wells, who had just compiled her seminal "Food Lover's Guide to France." In due course, Loomis would work on a follow-up volume about Paris, then set up a cooking school in Normandy and write her own book, "On Rue Tatin."
For a time, Loomis was Seattle's foremost foodie celebrity, pre-Internet, with a string of articles, recipes and cookbooks. Time passes, of course; Susan and Michael divorced, but Loomis's venture in Normandy endured. (Wells has her own programs, in Provence and in Paris.) A recent visitor to Rue Tatin was Alexander Lobrano, an ex-pat restaurant writer who authored a glowing feature that ran in this morning's Wall Street Journal. In it, Loomis describes "the irresistibly appetizing daily minutiae of French foodways," specifically having the basics in your larder at all times: clean salad greens, fresh eggs, good cream and butter. Making a meal, she insists, should "always be more of a pleasure than a chore."
Loomis still returns to Seattle; her most recent visit was last summer on a tour for her latest book, "In a French Kitchen." Proof that those sunny days in Louviers, midway between Paris and the Atlantic coast, can be just as inspirational as Capitol Hill.
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