In a few words:

  • Cassoulet ranks as my favorite food. Dark chocolate is a close second. I've never wanted to taste tofu.

  • I developed a cassoulet obsession. So much so that I had to write a book about it. It only took me 10 years to understand why.

  • I am a regular contributor to the Washington Post and Forbes.com. I also write for the New York Times, Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, Departures, and Edible Magazines, among others.

  • I've recently started writing in my native language, French! So far my articles have appeared in Le Figaro, Histoire Magazine, and frenchmorning.com.

  • One of my favorite projects was to co-author Daniel Boulud's Daniel, My French Cuisine.

  • My best news in 2020 was winning a New York Press Club Journalism Award for Travel Writing in a newspaper category.

  • I worked as a recipe tester for several cookbooks.

  • New York City is home. For now.

  • I was born in Geneva, Switzerland during the fireworks at a mid-summer festival and grew up between Paris and Lake Geneva.

Bio

International food and travel writer Sylvie Bigar was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and is based in New York City. She is fluent in French, English, and Italian. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Food & Wine, Forbes.com, Saveur, Bon Appetit, Food Arts, Departures, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, National Geographic Traveler, Gotham, Hamptons, Time Out New York, Air Canada, Passport Magazine, Narratives, Southampton Press, and New York Resident, for which she has also served as food editor. In French, Sylvie has contributed to Le Figaro Magazine, Histoire Magazine, her hometown newspaper, Le Temps and FrenchMorning.com.

In 2020, Her uncle died with the French Resistance, and she had to visit the spot for the Washington Post won a New York Press Club Journalism Award in the Travel Writing for a newspaper category. In 2018, Departures magazine's Hunting Gooseneck Barnacles on Vancouver Island won the bronze award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation for Best Culinary Travel. Back in 2016, French Cassoulet, an Obsession boils over for the Washington Post won a gold Travelers' Tales Solas Award for Best Travel Writing in the food and travel category.

Sylvie co-authored Chef Daniel Boulud's definitive and personal cookbook, Daniel: My French Cuisine published by Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, as well as Living Art: Style Your Home with Flowers with floral artist and designer Olivier Giugni published by Atria Books. Her New York Times essay about Aimé Césaire, Beneath Martinique's Beauty, Guided by a Poet was published in Footsteps, a curated collection of the New York Times' travel column, exploring iconic authors' relationships to landmarks and cities around the world.

Always seeking the most rewarding experiences to share with gourmands and globetrotters alike, Sylvie's many adventures have led her to explore the childhood home and native French province of Colette, her favorite author; the apple orchards of Ireland, the banks of the Oum Er-Rbia River in Morocco, the remote Swiss village of Mund with its seductive saffron, the Austro-Hungarian culinary revival in Prague, and Southwestern France on a long-time quest for the perfect cassoulet.

Sylvie's palate was put to work as a recipe taster for New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant's three cookbooks: Park Avenue Potluck, Volumes I and II, and The New York Restaurant Cookbook (all published by Rizzoli).