Rachel Khoo's Desert Island Books

Is there a city on this earth better, more beautiful, more impossibly intoxicating than Paris? It’s a place for reckless excess, and somewhere I have always, always wanted to live. Last year I visited five times; I’ll be there again in ten days, and—hopefully—again in December. But a few days here and there is never enough. While I continue figuring out how to make it happen (thanks, that dreaded B word—Brexit—and a boyfriend who would always rather live in Australia), in the meantime I’ll have to make do with vicariously living through someone else.

And while there are countless books that capture everything the City of Light is known and loved for—its tangled affairs, seductive charm and heady mix of beauty and chaos—there’s something about a memoir set in Paris that feels even more tantalising than a novel, particularly when it’s about opening the city’s smallest restaurant.

Rachel Khoo’s The Smallest Restaurant in Paris is a wonderfully nostalgic account of finding your feet, taking chances a…