On 3 November 1948, Julia Child and her husband Paul sat down for lunch at La Couronne, a venerable restaurant opened in 1345 in the Normandy capital of Rouen. Julia, a native of California, worried she “didn’t look chic enough” for the venue.
Her husband Paul, an American civil servant from New Jersey, was about to start a new job as an exhibits officer for the United States Information Agency, a now dissolved branch of the State Department. (Julia would later describe the position in her memoir My Life in France as “a sort of cultural/propaganda job”, through which Paul would “help promote French-American relations through the visual arts”.) The two had just arrived in France after days on the SS America, an ocean liner. Julia had never been to Europe before.
