David D. Downie (born 1958 in San Francisco) is a multilingual Paris-based American nonfiction author, crime novelist and journalist who writes most often about culture, food and travel.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Downie took a master’s degree in Italian from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was a Kenyon Scholar and University Fellow. After working in the early 1980s as a translator, interpreter and press officer in Milan, he moved to Paris. His writing reflects an abiding interest in French and Italian culture, politics, food and language.
His articles have appeared in about 50 publications, print and online, including The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Gastronomica, The Art of Eating, Australian Financial Review, Salon.com, Epicurious.com and Concierge.com. He has acted as Paris correspondent, contributing editor or European editor for a number of publications, including Appellation, Art & Antiques and Departures. His writing has also appeared in anthologies, among them The Collected Traveler volumes on Paris, Southwest France and Central Italy. Downie is currently a European correspondent for Gadling.com, the literary travel website.
In 1997 Downie’s crime novel La tour de l’immonde, about violence and murder in central Paris and its banlieue, was published in Paris.
His first nonfiction book in English, Enchanted Liguria also appeared in 1997; it was translated the following year in Italy under the title La Liguria incantata. His illustrated book on the contemporary cooking of Rome, Cooking the Roman Way, was listed among the top ten cookbooks of 2002 by The Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle. Cooking the Roman Way is full of anecdotes about the names, hidden meanings and origins of Italian foods; useful notes explain the difference between farro and spelt and the existence and uses of the quinto quarto "fifth quarter" of butchered animals.
Downie’s book Paris, Paris (first edition 2005) explores the sites of Paris, from the Ile Saint-Louis to Les Halles and the parks of Montsouris and Buttes Chaumont. Paris, Paris also features insights on Georges Pompidou, François Mitterrand and Coco Chanel. The book will be reissued in April 2011 as part of the Armchair Traveler series at Broadway Books.
European pilgrimage routes are another field of interest for Downie. In 2006, together with his wife, photographer Alison Harris, he walked 1,100 kilometers across France following sections of the Way of Saint James; a website documenting this journey is under construction,[1] and Downie is now writing a book about it. The updated edition of Paris, Paris includes a new chapter on the Way of Saint James in Paris.
Downie's latest books include three volumes in the Terroir Guides series, published by The Little Bookroom, and dedicated to the food and wine of the Italian Riviera (and Genoa), Rome, and Burgundy. In 2011 a new book by Downie about Rome will be published: Quiet Corners of Rome; Paris, Paris will also be reissued in 2011.
Downie's second crime novel Paris City of Night, a Hitchcock-style thriller involving a putative terrorist plot to destroy parts of Paris, was released in 2009.