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Patricia Wells signs autographs after teaching a bistro cooking seminar at the Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, Colorado, in June.

ALSO: Fanfare for the common French food: Vive Bastille Day!

July 5, 1999
Web posted at: 5:09 p.m. EDT (2109 GMT)

(CNN) -- Patricia Wells is the author of the traveler's classic "Food Lover's Guide to Paris" (Workman), recently released in its fourth edition, the first update in six years.

The book takes a tour through hundreds of restaurants, bistros, cafes and markets including wine shops and cheesemongers. Included are recipes for French cooking at home.

Wells is a restaurant critic for France's International Herald Tribune and a member of the James Beard Hall of Fame.

She began her career at the Washington Post in the 1970s, where she worked as a copy editor and art critic. She moved to the New York Times in 1976, where she became a food reporter on the newly created "Living Section."

Wells moved to Paris in 1980 with her husband Walter for a two-year stint at the International Herald Tribune. They decided to stay, and the "Food Lover's Guide to Paris" debuted in 1984.

When the "Food Lover's Guide to France" was published in 1987, Wells became restaurant critic of the newsweekly L'Express, the only female and only foreigner to have held the post.

Wells is also the author of Bistro Cooking, published in 1989 and translated into seven languages. The same year, the French government honored her for her contributions to French culture, awarding her the coveted Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Other books include a four-year project with French Chef Joel Robuchon, out of which came Simply French, a book still among France's top-selling cookbooks.

An assignment in Italy and a series of inspirational meals at casual eateries led to a two-year quest for the best of modern-day Italian trattoria fare and became her best-selling "Patricia Wells' Trattoria," published in 1993.

Her book "Patricia Wells at Home in Provence" is the culmination of more than a decade of life in Provence, where she and her husband have restored and refurbished Chanteduc, an old farmhouse they acquired in 1984.