The International Cuisine Julia Child Couldn't Live Without (It's Not French)

Julia Child may have been a champion of French cuisine, but there was one type of food she once said she could subsist solely upon — and the twist is, it wasn't French. In a 1974 piece in the New Yorker, Child was documented revealing which type of food it was to a table's worth of acquaintances over an extended dinner. Child, who was stuck writing notes to her friends after briefly losing her voice at the time, scribbled to them, "I would be perfectly happy w. only Chinese food. Either French or Chinese. Could live w. only Chinese."

Of course, the restaurant they were at was a Chinese one. And her relationship with the food wasn't just surface level as she'd actually lived in China for a year and a half during World War II. The food wasn't the only notable thing that changed her life there: It was in Kunming where she'd also been courted by her husband-to-be, Paul. 

Although Julia Child had said that Chinese food was her favorite (followed by French, of course), she never ended up cooking it. She already felt that one lifetime wasn't enough to learn and embody French cuisine, so Child did the next best thing, which was to go out to eat at Chinese restaurants instead. Based on how deep and expansive Chinese cooking can be, I honestly don't blame her, and besides, food always seems to taste so much better when someone else makes it for you.

However, that does have me wondering how Julia Child felt about any Chinese dishes containing cilantro because she is also on record saying how much she loathed the green herb. She once told talk show host Larry King that it had a "dead taste" to her. Who knows, maybe she just picked it out, but that clearly didn't change the way she felt about Chinese food because it sounded like she could never quite get enough of it.