I was 19 when I bought Julia Child’s first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, (published in 1961) after seeing her on television. It was also when I started cooking her recipes and shopped at Fred Bridge’s for the best in cookware. I was terrified of him but mustered my courage because I needed the ​“magic” pot. I cooked mostly for my sister Debby, who was a wanna-be NYC snob. That was the start of my love for French food. It was tasty, but did not give me heartburn. 

In 1972, on my first working trip to Paris, the city that smells like butter, we worked day and night to cover the Paris collections. There was no digital anything, so we saw the fashion shows, photographed and laid out the pictures, all to be printed, in a matter of days. This meant eating meals in the kitchen of the ground floor of our Vogue office on Rue de Varenne. I don’t remember the clothes, but I remember the chicken stew, moist in a creamy mushroom sauce with a hint of tarragon.

Back in New York, our little working group would have lunch at Le Cheval Blanc once a month, where we were required to speak French during the meal. My French is terrible, but I ate well, especially the calf’s liver and bacon. I also started frequenting the ​“original Brasserie” on East 53rd Street, the one in the Seagram Building, Le Veau d’Or, where I ate sweetbreads; and if I got lucky, I was invited to lunch at Le Grenouille and savored quenelles (a fish dumpling, something slightly akin to high end gefilte fish ball) in amazing sauce.

The tradition of the dishes, the informed wait staff, the ability to linger and the art on the wall brought me back to these places again and again. The restaurants are now gone, except for the recently reopened Le Veau d’Or, which my daughter, Julia, made sure she waited for their reservation website to open and secured a lunch reservation for three of us — her, her father and me. It did not disappoint.