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coraaGarlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
, by Ruth Reichl
I told you I'd eventually do a book I didn't care for!
I've been reading a lot of food writing, in the same way that (I assume) poker players read poker theory, or knitters read about knitting -- because right now cooking is one of my primary hobbies. And there's a lot of great food writing out there. In doing my food reading, the name "Ruth Reichl" came up many times, so I finally picked up her three memoir-esque food books (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me With Apples, and this one -- I didn't blog the first two separately because I read them last year, but I'll go ahead and discuss them all together, though with focus on the last.) And sure enough, they do have a ton of interesting and often good writing about food, about becoming a cook, and about reviewing good restaurants. (Garlic and Sapphires is about her tenure as the New York Times food critic, during which time she went to restaurants in disguise -- to prevent them from treating her differently because she was the critic. Reprints of the reviews themselves are scattered through the book.)
The problem was that, as I read, I increasingly found that I just didn't like Ruth Reichl very much. In fact, by the end, I pendulum-swung between feeling apathetic toward her, and actually disliking her. I feel weird saying that, because I feel like I ought to critique the book and not the author... but when the book is a memoir, that's a really fuzzy line, isn't it? So I'll give you the caveat that I'm willing to believe that Ruth Reichl-the-character-in-her-own-memoir is not quite the same person as Ruth Reichl-the-author, and that my criticisms below are about the former, without claim about the latter. And if you through some chance happen to be a close personal friend of Reichl, it might be better for us both if you just skip over this one. Okay? Okay.
Spoilers ahoy, for all three books.
My problems would be less, well, problematic if the books weren't so very much All About Ruth. That's one thing that you should know: these three books are only kind of about food, but they're entirely about Reichl and charting every tiny movement of her personal development. So they wound up feeling profoundly self-indulgent. (I think I would have minded less if they hadn't been packaged, blurbed and recommended as food books -- if I knew I was getting a memoir, maybe I'd've felt less inclined to say "Okay, enough about you already!" Or else, more likely, I wouldn't have picked it up.) She spends a lot of time trying to determine her purpose in life, and I'll be totally honest about my biases here: unless your life is fascinating and you write like an angel and you have an acute awareness that your interior life is not the most important thing ever even as you write about it, I probably don't want to read about your search for your purpose in life. (Unless you're a close personal friend, in which case I am predisposed to care more.)
(I also had some trouble with her portrayal of her mother's mental illness, but it's not mine to say whether she was right or wrong about her own parents. Suffice it to say, I think her lack of criticism of her father in the situation -- as compared to the mostly-unsympathetic way she talks about her [sick] mother -- is a little wince-worthy.)
There were some good things about the books, don't get me wrong. They're written well and smoothly; Reichl definitely knows how to turn a phrase, and she's pretty good at describing food, flavors and textures and so on, which isn't easy. Garlic and Sapphires has her famous 'double review' of Le Cirque, in which she went as herself and then later in disguise as "Molly," a middle-aged Midwestern woman on vacation in New York, and was treated drastically differently, which is an interesting read. It also describes the way a restaurant critic is expected to analyze dishes: not just to say that the soup has an elusive hint of sweetness, but to find out that the sweetness is pineapple juice; not just to determine that there's a rich, earthy character to the rabbit stew, but to discern that the secret ingredient is chocolate. And I learned some things: for example, why the quality of the steaks may vary in even a good steakhouse. (The process of wet- and dry-aging a steak, which is the main difference between a restaurant steak and a steak cooked at home, isn't totally predictable: while you're unlikely to ever get a bad steak from a great restaurant, it can be hard even for the chef to predict whether a particular steak is going to be fantastic or merely good.)
But I spent a lot of the book -- and the prior ones -- wishing the author/protagonist would get over herself, please. The real kicker in this one was that, when Reichl put on costumes, she also took on the personalities of the people she was pretending to be, playacting their mannerisms and reactions. So far so good. But several of the characters she portrayed were unpleasant people, and she threw herself fully into their unpleasantness -- one penny-pinching character was her excuse to tip badly (tip her cab driver badly, even, so it wasn't about the restaurant she was reviewing) and to insult other diners, blatantly, within their earshot. This made me grind my teeth. I grant you, the book ended with an epiphany of, "Maybe I shouldn't let this job turn me into a jackass!", but by that point I wasn't so much impressed with her insight as wondering why on earth it took her so long to figure that out. No, your job as Queen of Food isn't an excuse to dress up in disguise and act badly without repercussion! Of course it isn't! Why on earth would you think it was?
Between that, the namedropping, and the way her son was just the picture of sweetness and insight (yes, everyone thinks their child is wonderful and special, and they should think that, but I do get tired of reading about it unalloyed), I was just sick of Reichl by the end. I felt like I'd spent the duration of the book having my ear talked off by an intelligent, well-spoken but fundamentally self-centered and self-indulgent person, and I was glad it was over.
If you're interested in restaurant reviews and reviewing, this might still be worth your time. Really, though, check it out from the library, or just read the two best chapters ("Molly" and "The King of Spain").
, by Ruth ReichlI told you I'd eventually do a book I didn't care for!
I've been reading a lot of food writing, in the same way that (I assume) poker players read poker theory, or knitters read about knitting -- because right now cooking is one of my primary hobbies. And there's a lot of great food writing out there. In doing my food reading, the name "Ruth Reichl" came up many times, so I finally picked up her three memoir-esque food books (Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me With Apples, and this one -- I didn't blog the first two separately because I read them last year, but I'll go ahead and discuss them all together, though with focus on the last.) And sure enough, they do have a ton of interesting and often good writing about food, about becoming a cook, and about reviewing good restaurants. (Garlic and Sapphires is about her tenure as the New York Times food critic, during which time she went to restaurants in disguise -- to prevent them from treating her differently because she was the critic. Reprints of the reviews themselves are scattered through the book.)
The problem was that, as I read, I increasingly found that I just didn't like Ruth Reichl very much. In fact, by the end, I pendulum-swung between feeling apathetic toward her, and actually disliking her. I feel weird saying that, because I feel like I ought to critique the book and not the author... but when the book is a memoir, that's a really fuzzy line, isn't it? So I'll give you the caveat that I'm willing to believe that Ruth Reichl-the-character-in-her-own-memoir is not quite the same person as Ruth Reichl-the-author, and that my criticisms below are about the former, without claim about the latter. And if you through some chance happen to be a close personal friend of Reichl, it might be better for us both if you just skip over this one. Okay? Okay.
Spoilers ahoy, for all three books.
My problems would be less, well, problematic if the books weren't so very much All About Ruth. That's one thing that you should know: these three books are only kind of about food, but they're entirely about Reichl and charting every tiny movement of her personal development. So they wound up feeling profoundly self-indulgent. (I think I would have minded less if they hadn't been packaged, blurbed and recommended as food books -- if I knew I was getting a memoir, maybe I'd've felt less inclined to say "Okay, enough about you already!" Or else, more likely, I wouldn't have picked it up.) She spends a lot of time trying to determine her purpose in life, and I'll be totally honest about my biases here: unless your life is fascinating and you write like an angel and you have an acute awareness that your interior life is not the most important thing ever even as you write about it, I probably don't want to read about your search for your purpose in life. (Unless you're a close personal friend, in which case I am predisposed to care more.)
(I also had some trouble with her portrayal of her mother's mental illness, but it's not mine to say whether she was right or wrong about her own parents. Suffice it to say, I think her lack of criticism of her father in the situation -- as compared to the mostly-unsympathetic way she talks about her [sick] mother -- is a little wince-worthy.)
There were some good things about the books, don't get me wrong. They're written well and smoothly; Reichl definitely knows how to turn a phrase, and she's pretty good at describing food, flavors and textures and so on, which isn't easy. Garlic and Sapphires has her famous 'double review' of Le Cirque, in which she went as herself and then later in disguise as "Molly," a middle-aged Midwestern woman on vacation in New York, and was treated drastically differently, which is an interesting read. It also describes the way a restaurant critic is expected to analyze dishes: not just to say that the soup has an elusive hint of sweetness, but to find out that the sweetness is pineapple juice; not just to determine that there's a rich, earthy character to the rabbit stew, but to discern that the secret ingredient is chocolate. And I learned some things: for example, why the quality of the steaks may vary in even a good steakhouse. (The process of wet- and dry-aging a steak, which is the main difference between a restaurant steak and a steak cooked at home, isn't totally predictable: while you're unlikely to ever get a bad steak from a great restaurant, it can be hard even for the chef to predict whether a particular steak is going to be fantastic or merely good.)
But I spent a lot of the book -- and the prior ones -- wishing the author/protagonist would get over herself, please. The real kicker in this one was that, when Reichl put on costumes, she also took on the personalities of the people she was pretending to be, playacting their mannerisms and reactions. So far so good. But several of the characters she portrayed were unpleasant people, and she threw herself fully into their unpleasantness -- one penny-pinching character was her excuse to tip badly (tip her cab driver badly, even, so it wasn't about the restaurant she was reviewing) and to insult other diners, blatantly, within their earshot. This made me grind my teeth. I grant you, the book ended with an epiphany of, "Maybe I shouldn't let this job turn me into a jackass!", but by that point I wasn't so much impressed with her insight as wondering why on earth it took her so long to figure that out. No, your job as Queen of Food isn't an excuse to dress up in disguise and act badly without repercussion! Of course it isn't! Why on earth would you think it was?
Between that, the namedropping, and the way her son was just the picture of sweetness and insight (yes, everyone thinks their child is wonderful and special, and they should think that, but I do get tired of reading about it unalloyed), I was just sick of Reichl by the end. I felt like I'd spent the duration of the book having my ear talked off by an intelligent, well-spoken but fundamentally self-centered and self-indulgent person, and I was glad it was over.
If you're interested in restaurant reviews and reviewing, this might still be worth your time. Really, though, check it out from the library, or just read the two best chapters ("Molly" and "The King of Spain").