Online - December 08, 2005

Let’s Do Lunch

“When You Lunch with the Emperor,” by Ludwig Bemelmans

Q: What do you get when you cross Anthony Bourdain, E.B. White, Adam Gopnik, M.F.K. Fisher, and James Bond?

A: The legendary bon vivant Ludwig Bemelmans, whose travelogues and personal essays, long out of print, can now be savored in When You Lunch with the Emperor.

Best known for his Madeline children’s books, Bemelmans’s writing for adults made a comeback last year with the re-release of Hotel Bemelmans, a collection of witty tales about his experiences as an employee at The Splendide, his pseudonym for the world-renowned Ritz Hotel.

Lunch takes Bemelmans further afield, from the Austrian Tyrol to the Amazon, from rustic inns in the German countryside to the glittering ballrooms of Manhattan’s grandest hotels, where the irrepressible voyager impersonates the warden of New York’s infamous Sing Sing, gets caught by the Gestapo with his toenails painted red, smuggles a contraband toy poodle aboard a ship to France, muffs his Off-Broadway debut, lets Parisian criminals nanny his young daughter, and investigates the rivalries of Ecuadorian restaurateurs.

(What did you do last weekend?)

Each adventure is reported with wry sweetness ­and illustrated with Bemelmans’s inimitable drawings.

Now that’s something you can dine out on.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local book store.