Have Tongue, Will Travel: Garlic and Sapphires

Review by Bruce Collier June 16, 2005 Issue

The subtitle of this book is “The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise.” If you take an interest in food, particularly the big league stuff— celebrity chefs, hot spot restaurants, and culinary trends—the author will be a familiar name, though possibly not a familiar face.

Ruth Reichl is currently editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, the Sports Illustrated of food fans. Prior to that dream gig, she held another dream gig, as restaurant critic for The New York Times. This book, which covers her hitch there in the 1990s, indicates that the dream wasn’t always a sweet one.

The book starts with two chapters that drag a bit while explaining how she got the job. Reichl admits to having taken “liberties” with characters and situations. Still, the dialogue sounds like a Woody Allen screenplay before an editor got to it. The point of the first two chapters is, simply, “Ruth Reichl is one heck of a food writer, New York is one heck of a town, and The New York Times is one heck of a paper.”

Once she gets past this point, she, and the book, take off. The New York fine dining scene is as brutal and competitive as any business in which the risks are as high as the payoffs. Combine that with ego, hype, and lust for fame and fortune, and you get the idea. The New York Times is the most influential paper in New York, if not the country, and the word of its food critic can literally close the most revered palace of cuisine overnight. Or raise an obscure little dive to food Valhalla in the same amount of time.

Naturally, reasons Reichl, a restaurant is going to be on the lookout for said critic. Said critic, once spotted, will be treated like the power broker she is. This is unfair, because in a just world, everyone should be treated equally well at any restaurant. Reichl resolves to dine in disguise, in order to receive the same treatment as Jane Doe. To this end, she employs various friends—an acting teacher, a wig seller, and sundry clothing advisors—to create a stable of alter egos. Each has its own; you should pardon the expression, flavor.

Among the cast of diners in disguise are mild-mannered Molly, a retired Michigan schoolteacher, sexy siren Chloe, warm and lovable free spirit Brenda, and Miriam, a somewhat weird reincarnation of Reichl’s mother. Reichl dispatches these characters to some of New York’s most hallowed dining establishments.

The results are pretty much all the same. In one celebrated case, Reichl dined twice at Le Cirque, arguably the most high-class joint in town at the time, and a shoo-in for a four-star review. Her first time, as Molly, was a study in disappointment. Later, as Ruth Reichl, she feasted like a queen. Only the intervention of her editor kept her from writing two separate reviews. Instead, she wrote one combination review, detailing both experiences and withholding the fourth star.

Diners responded with anger, contempt, and a call for her dismissal. This becomes a pattern throughout the book. Only the occasional call of support from the commonality, as well as her faithful husband and son, keeps her at it. Still, one gets the impression from Reichl that the Times is a perilous place to work, and the life of a “hired mouth” resembles that of a permanently sitting duck.

Not every chapter is about dining disappointment, though. Reichl makes a number of eating and shopping tours, finding obscure delights in out-of-the-way places. In a chapter on reviewing the city’s famous steak houses, she reflects on her New York childhood, and her father’s weekly ritual of selecting, cooking, and savoring a butcher-cut steak. Her descriptions of food border on the erotic, and she throws every ounce of her considerable passion into her work. The book is laced with restaurant reviews, and with recipes from Reichl’s collection, most of them dishes made for her family.

In the end, however, the pressures, and the jerks, take their toll. In one chapter, titled “Food Warrior,” a charity auction requires her to take a guest along on a “working dinner,” to Windows on the World. The guest, who calls himself a “food warrior” (surely one of the lamest titles ever self-bestowed), makes himself thoroughly obnoxious, the personification of a trivial, indulgent food snob. This is only one of a series of wake-up calls that lead Reichl to a reassessment, and ultimately a new job.

If you love food, you’ll love this book. If you think of dining as simply a daily chore, or a waste of money, best leave it alone, because Reichl is not trying to make converts. Not many people can match her zeal for food, but it’s always a pleasure for me to read someone writing about something they truly love. And if reading this book doesn’t make you ravenously hungry, you’ve been dieting too long.

Garlic and Sapphires, Penguin Press, 333 pages, available at online and local bookstores and local libraries.

(Top)

More Book Reviews