La Maison du Chocolat: Transcendent Desserts by the Legendary Chocolatier

What to say about this masterpiece...I was fortunate to have met and trained with legendary Chocolatier Robert Linxe in Paris, France. This book goes beyond the standard cookbook. It's a piece of art in itself. A coffee-table book if you will that lures its readers into the photos with pure decadence. Anyone who names his truffle creations after famous Operas deserves a long and lingering look-see.!

Classic authentic recipes. He was a master at his craft.

I agree with reviwers' comments on the photography - exceptional shots of works of art. I have been working with pastry and food for 12 years, and recommend this book as an excellent gift for someone. Constructively speaking however, it is not perfect. There are typographical errors, most trivial, several in recipes (not trivial). I thought the format a bit too much 'coffee table', and the fonts used too small and hard to read for some small neasures. The small fonts also wasted paper - large sections of blank paper in the pages. Regardless, the recipes are excellent and flavorful - don't be afraid to use the chocolate you have available. As a companion book, take a look at 'Belgian Chocolates' by Roger Geerts (1990). They are a great set!

Chocolate is one of the four basic food groups. The others are, some say, wine and garlic, with furious debate over the fourth.Linxe has, over a lifetime, created a veritable ode to chocolate in many forms, and his five stores in Paris are well worth the visit (you will come out much poorer except in chocolate). His New York jewel, which has moved slightly downtown from the East 70s to Madison Avenue, is worth seeing and smelling close up--any chocolate lover will understand.The soul of Linxe's art with chocolate is captured in this magnificent book. The photographs alone are sinfully sensual.A baker friend says that the recipes are within her grasp if she only had the time, and the money, and could get all the ingredients conveniently. She and I both agreed, and this was pointed out by another reviewer, that the history and diversity of chocolate is a significant omission, but wanting more data on chocolate is perhaps greedy on our part and we should not sit around lazily on a chocolate high, with some decent pinot noir on the side, but get out and do our own research.For what it is, and not for what it omits, this is a great book. It makes one want to fly to Paris right this second, and there one can find all the other vital food groups as well.

I have been wanting this book for a while, but I waited a long time (too long) to buy it. This book is not only visually beautiful, it has some interesting information about chocolate in general, as well as some really intriguing recipes - some of them are on a professional level and are quite complex, but a lot of them are pretty simple and sound very nice. Even if you never make a recipe out of this book, I don't think that you will regret buying it.

This books undoubtedly has got many nice pictures, but when trying a recipe I found out that there are so many mistakes in it that it is impossible to make the cake. There is also a large discrepancy between the image an the recipe. It is not the first time that a nicely illustrated book has got faulty recipes and one buys it just because it looks so nice. I can't speak for the other recipes in this book, but the one I tried is so bad that I won't dare to try any other ones let alone ever buy a cook book published from Maison du Chocolat.

Great recipes!

Top flight book from the most famous chocolatier in the world. I go to Paris and make this shop my first and last stop. Good recipes and accurate. I bought an extra book and framed many of the photos. Recipes turn out perfectly.

Some mix up at the printer - had some pages repeated and others not in there, having only found this out after half of it was covered in chocolate I'm stuck with it! Great recipes, but a bit vague in some places, no size of tins etc so lots of guess work....